How do judges of the Supreme Court of Florida reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Supreme Court of Florida / Joined 1985 / Served to 1994

Rosemary Barkett

Justice, Supreme Court of Florida

Rosemary Barkett was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Florida, who joined the court in 1985. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1939 · age 87
Tenure: 1985–1994 · 9 yrs
Education: Spring Hill College 1967

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1985	Supreme Court of Florida	–	–

Education

University of Florida
Spring Hill College	B.S.	1967

Judicial Record

In our data, Barkett authored 58 published opinions for the court (1986–1994), plus 20 dissents and 34 concurrences. Most cited: Swafford v. State (134 citations).

Published, precedential opinions from the CourtListener corpus. Counts and rankings are objective and recomputable: how we count. We describe the record, not the judge. 112 of these were attributed to Barkett by a unique court-, date-, and surname-match against our roster (marked ), because CourtListener recorded no author for them. Each links to the official text to verify. How we match.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1988	Swafford v. State· Dissent†	533 So. 2d 270	134
1993	Hall v. State· Dissent†	614 So. 2d 473	56
1990	King v. Dugger· Dissent†	555 So. 2d 355	46
1990	David v. Richman· Dissent†	568 So. 2d 922	41
1987	Florida Rules of Criminal Procedure re Sentencing Guidelines (Rules 3.701 & 3.988)· Concurrence†	509 So. 2d 1088	37
1987	Barnett Bank of East Polk County v. Fleming†	508 So. 2d 718	29
1992	Robinson v. State· Concurrence†	610 So. 2d 1288	25
1990	Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services v. Polk· Concurrence†	568 So. 2d 35	25
1991	M.F. v. State†	583 So. 2d 1383	21
1994	In re Advisory Opinion to the Governor—Dual Office-Holding†	630 So. 2d 1055	19
1992	In re Forfeiture of 1969 Piper Navajo†	592 So. 2d 233	15
1991	Henry v. State· Concurrence†	586 So. 2d 1033	12
1990	Florida Bar: Petition to Amend the Rules· Concurrence†	571 So. 2d 451	12
1992	A.B.G. v. State· Dissent†	605 So. 2d 1261	8
1988	State v. Wayne†	531 So. 2d 160	7

Showing the 15 most-cited of 112 authored opinions in our data. “Cited” is inbound citations across the CourtListener corpus. Case links open the ruling’s full text (CourtListener) or its page here; read the methodology and verify against the primary source.

Questions & answers

How do judges of the Supreme Court of Florida reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Rosemary Barkett on?: Rosemary Barkett was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Florida.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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9 years on the Supreme Court of Florida. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).