(L-to-R): Judge Jonathan D. Gerber, Judge Jeffrey T. Kuntz, Judge Anuraag Singhal, Judge Barbara Lagoa, Judge Robert J. Luck, and attorney John Couriel.

 

Over half of the 11 nominees to the Florida Supreme Court hail from South Florida.

The overrepresentation is in part because one of the open seats must be filled with a nominee who lives in the third appellate district, which includes Miami-Dade and Monroe counties.

Justices Barbara Pariente, Fred Lewis, and Peggy Quince are facing mandatory retirement, leaving Florida Governor-elect Ron DeSantis three seats to fill before his inauguration on Jan. 8.

A total of 6 of the 11 nominees are from South Florida. The three eligible for the Third DCA seat are John Daniel Couriel, Barbara Lagoa and Robert J, Luck. The other two at-large seats have no geographical restrictions.

Lagoa has the most appellate experience and is the chief justice-elect for the Third DCA, having spent 12 years on the bench and authoring 336 majority opinions. Before her appointment, she worked for three years as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Florida.

As a judge, Luck has both trial and appellate experience. He was appointed to the Third DCA by Florida Gov. Rick Scott in 2017. Previously, Luck presided in the Criminal, Civil and Appellate Divisions of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit Court of Florida, a position he held for four years. Luck also spent five years, from 2008 to 2013, as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Florida.

Couriel is the only nominee vying for the Third District seat who isn't a judge. Couriel is a partner at Kobre & Kim who focuses his practice on “high-stakes cross-border disputes, with a particular focus on Latin America,” according to his attorney bio. Like Lagoa and Luck, Couriel worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Florida.

Appellate experience is always a big plus for aspiring Supreme Court justices, according to  University of Florida Law School Professor Joseph Little. Appellate judges who have trial experience have an even bigger advantage, he said.

“I think it's important to have a couple of judges with trial experience on the court,” said Little, who stressed that he has no knowledge of the internal decision-making in the DeSantis administration.

And while rare, it's not unheard of to have an attorney elevated to Florida's highest court. Former Chief Justice Charles Wells was an attorney when he was appointed by former Gov. Lawton Chiles. Justice R. Fred Lewis, who is one of the justices facing mandatory retirement next year, also came from private practice.

It's worth noting that Florida Republicans have long chastised the court for rulings that run contrary to their agenda. Pariente, Lewis, and Quince ruled with the 4-3 majority in Bush v. Gore, for example, and were also involved in the blocking of the 24-hour waiting period on abortions. Some see these open seats as an opportunity to make the court more conservative. Luck and Couriel are both tied to the Federalist Society — an organization that describes itself as “a group of conservatives and libertarians interested in the current state of the legal order.”

According to Little, Florida has, for the most part, bucked the national trend of stacking courts with ideologues aligned with the administration that appoints them. He hopes that does not change with DeSantis.

“I'm hopeful that he will try to decide which of these persons would be the best justice in terms of being knowledgeable about the law and impartial about the issues that are being decided and don't have a political agenda,” Little said.

The other South Florida nominees vying for the two at-large seats are: