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

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

Iowa Supreme Court / Joined 2006 / Former Justice

Brent R. Appel

Justice, Iowa Supreme Court

Brent R. Appel was a Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, who joined the court in 2006. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 2006 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2006	Iowa Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Stanford University

Judicial Record

In our data, Appel authored 192 published opinions for the court (2007–2019), plus 37 dissents and 42 concurrences. Most cited: In Re the Marriage of Hansen (621 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. 217 of these were attributed to Appel 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
2007	In Re the Marriage of Hansen	733 N.W.2d 683	621
2012	State of Iowa v. Allen Bradley Clay· Concurrence†	824 N.W.2d 488	476
2013	In RE the Marriage of Rachel A. McDermott and Stephen J. McDermott Upon the Petition of Rachel A. McDermott· Dissent†	827 N.W.2d 671	401
2009	State v. Bruegger	773 N.W.2d 862	342
2013	State of Iowa v. Denem Anthony Null†	836 N.W.2d 41	303
2019	In the Interest of L.T., A.T., and D.T., Minor Children†	924 N.W.2d 521	291
2011	State of Iowa v. Randall Lee Pals†	805 N.W.2d 767	252
2017	State of Iowa v. Kelvin Plain Sr.· Concurrence†	898 N.W.2d 801	249
2013	State of Iowa v. Craig Anthony Finney†	834 N.W.2d 46	245
2016	State of Iowa v. Donald James Hill· Concurrence†	878 N.W.2d 269	239
2015	In Re the Marriage of Steven Michael Gust and Linda Leann Gust Upon the Petition of Steven Michael Gust†	858 N.W.2d 402	224
2015	State of Iowa v. Tina Lynn Thacker†	862 N.W.2d 402	217
2013	State of Iowa v. Christopher Craig Thompson· Concurrence†	837 N.W.2d 180	173
2013	State of Iowa v. Tommy Tyler, Jr.· Concurrence†	830 N.W.2d 288	173
2017	State of Iowa v. Eddie Tipton†	897 N.W.2d 653	164

Showing the 15 most-cited of 271 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 Iowa Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Brent R. Appel on?: Brent R. Appel was a Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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