How do judges of the Florida District Courts of Appeal reach the bench?

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

Florida District Courts of Appeal / Joined 1977 / Served to 1979

Woodrow Melvin

Judge, Florida District Courts of Appeal

Woodrow Melvin was a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal (102 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1977. He previously served on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1977–1979 · 2 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1960	District of Columbia Court of Appeals	–	–
1977	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Melvin authored 89 published opinions for the court (1965–1980), plus 3 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Axelrod v. Califano (43 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. 42 of these were attributed to Melvin 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
1978	Axelrod v. Califano	357 So. 2d 1048	43
1980	WBD, INC. v. Howard Johnson Co.	382 So. 2d 1323	29
1965	Sears v. James Talcott, Inc.	174 So. 2d 776	25
1977	Ashley v. State	350 So. 2d 839	19
1975	Berry v. State	316 So. 2d 72	19
1978	Matthews v. GSP CORP.	354 So. 2d 1243	18
1978	Watford v. State	353 So. 2d 1263	15
1975	Gryca v. State	315 So. 2d 221	15
1973	State v. Young	283 So. 2d 58	14
1976	Dowst v. State	336 So. 2d 375	13
1979	Peck Plaza Condominium v. Division of Florida Land Sales & Condominiums†	371 So. 2d 152	12
1978	Amerson v. Jacksonville Elec. Authority	362 So. 2d 433	12
1976	O'NEILL v. State	336 So. 2d 699	12
1966	Grissinger v. Griffin	186 So. 2d 58	12
1979	St. Louis-San Francisco Ry. Co. v. White	369 So. 2d 1007	11

Showing the 15 most-cited of 94 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 Florida District Courts of Appeal reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Woodrow Melvin on?: Woodrow Melvin was a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal.

Sources

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

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