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 1961 / Served to 2001

Bruce M. Snell

Justice, Iowa Supreme Court

Bruce M. Snell was a Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1961. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1895 · age 131
Tenure: 1961–2001 · 40 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1961	Iowa Supreme Court	–	–
1987	Iowa Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Snell authored 306 published opinions for the court (1961–2001), plus 69 dissents and 20 concurrences. Most cited: Graham v. Worthington (118 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. 173 of these were attributed to Snell 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
1966	Graham v. Worthington· Dissent†	146 N.W.2d 626	118
1992	State v. Casady†	491 N.W.2d 782	108
2000	State v. Artzer· Concurrence†	609 N.W.2d 526	97
1961	State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance v. Anderson-Weber, Inc.	110 N.W.2d 449	90
2000	State v. Klawonn· Concurrence†	609 N.W.2d 515	80
1997	State v. Atley†	564 N.W.2d 817	75
1994	Haupt v. Miller†	514 N.W.2d 905	73
1963	State v. Stump	119 N.W.2d 210	73
1992	State v. Tracy†	482 N.W.2d 675	69
1993	Beeman v. Manville Corp. Asbestos Disease Compensation Fund· Dissent†	496 N.W.2d 247	65
1969	State v. Galloway	167 N.W.2d 89	65
1993	In the Interest of B.G.C.· Dissent†	496 N.W.2d 239	59
1965	Syester v. Banta	133 N.W.2d 666	58
1998	Goodell v. Humboldt County· Dissent†	575 N.W.2d 486	56
2000	State v. Rohm· Concurrence†	609 N.W.2d 504	55

Showing the 15 most-cited of 395 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 Bruce M. Snell on?: Bruce M. Snell 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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40 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).