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

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

Iowa Court of Appeals / Joined 1976 / Active

Bruce M. Snell Jr.

Judge, Iowa Court of Appeals

Bruce M. Snell Jr. is a Judge of the Iowa Court of Appeals, serving since 1976. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 1976 · 50 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1976	Iowa Court of Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Snell authored 108 published opinions for the court (1977–1987), plus 8 dissents and 4 concurrences. Most cited: In Re the Marriage of Griffin (63 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. 58 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
1984	In Re the Marriage of Griffin	356 N.W.2d 606	63
1977	Holmquist v. Volkswagen of America, Inc.†	261 N.W.2d 516	32
1984	Blong v. Snyder· Dissent†	361 N.W.2d 312	26
1984	In Re the Marriage of Stewart	356 N.W.2d 611	26
1980	Latham v. Sullivan†	295 N.W.2d 472	23
1985	State v. Hall	371 N.W.2d 187	21
1984	State v. Koenighain	356 N.W.2d 237	20
1987	State v. Nebinger†	412 N.W.2d 180	18
1985	State v. Winders· Dissent†	366 N.W.2d 193	18
1984	Sauer v. Moffitt†	363 N.W.2d 269	18
1986	In Re the Marriage of Detert· Dissent†	391 N.W.2d 707	17
1986	State v. Brown	400 N.W.2d 74	16
1982	Larson v. Massey-Ferguson, Inc.	328 N.W.2d 343	16
1987	Kunau v. Pillers, Pillers & Pillers, P.C.· Dissent†	404 N.W.2d 573	15
1986	Fratzke v. Meyer†	398 N.W.2d 200	15

Showing the 15 most-cited of 120 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 Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court is Bruce M. Snell Jr. on?: Bruce M. Snell Jr. is a Judge of the Iowa Court of Appeals.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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