Florida's high court stacked with Gov. Ron DeSantis picks as governor names new justice

Divya Kumar and Romy Ellenbogen, Miami Herald on Jan 14, 2026

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MIAMI — Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday appointed Adam Tanenbaum, a judge for the First District Court of Appeals, to the Florida Supreme Court.

DeSantis announced the appointment at Tanenbaum’s alma mater: Seminole High School in Pinellas County, where he graduated first in his class in 1989 — the same year as the kids in “Stranger Things,” Tanenbaum joked to students.

Tanenbaum’s placement means the state’s high court will be overwhelmingly represented by DeSantis appointees. Already, five of the seven justices have been seated by DeSantis since he took office in 2019.

Tanenbaum will replace Justice Charles Canady, who stepped down to lead the University of Florida’s Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education.

Only Justice Jorge Labarga, who is approaching the court’s mandatory retirement age, was appointed by another governor. Labarga was appointed by Gov. Charlie Crist.

Tanenbaum described himself as an originalist who believes in “judicial humility.”

“I subscribe to the fixation thesis and the constraint principle,” he said. “The meaning of the text is fixed at the time of its ratification or enactment, and that original meaning does not change over time.”

Still, he said, a conservative approach does not mean timidity and sometimes “circumstances require boldness to restore our jurisprudence to its historical roots.

“The centuries of history, custom and tradition come to us through the Anglo American legal system as our inheritance, and we constantly must be studying, studying all of that and the context in which the law we are applying was adopted,” he said. “If in the process, we discover through additional evidence that our predecessors have missed the mark, we are duty bound to say so.”