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 2011 / Former Justice

Bruce B. Zager

Justice, Iowa Supreme Court

Bruce B. Zager was a Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, who joined the court in 2011. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 2011 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2011	Iowa Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of Iowa
Drake University

Judicial Record

In our data, Zager authored 100 published opinions for the court (2011–2018), plus 16 dissents and 11 concurrences. Most cited: In the Interest of M.W. and Z.W., Minor Children, R.W., Mother (692 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. 127 of these were attributed to Zager 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
2016	In the Interest of M.W. and Z.W., Minor Children, R.W., Mother†	876 N.W.2d 212	692
2014	In the Interest of J.S. & N.S., Minor Children, A.S., Mother· Dissent†	846 N.W.2d 36	351
2012	State of Iowa v. Dontay Dakwon Sanford†	814 N.W.2d 611	325
2013	State of Iowa v. Denem Anthony Null· Concurrence†	836 N.W.2d 41	303
2014	State v. Lyle· Dissent†	854 N.W.2d 378	301
2013	State of Iowa v. Jeffrey K. Ragland· Concurrence†	836 N.W.2d 107	211
2011	Daniel Lado v. State of Iowa†	804 N.W.2d 248	178
2015	State of Iowa v. Max v. Thorndike†	860 N.W.2d 316	175
2013	State of Iowa v. Tommy Tyler, Jr.†	830 N.W.2d 288	173
2018	State of Iowa v. Bradley Elroy Wickes†	910 N.W.2d 554	171
2015	Eric Wayne Dempsey v. State of Iowa†	860 N.W.2d 860	168
2012	Roger B. Ennenga v. State of Iowa†	812 N.W.2d 696	166
2014	State of Iowa v. Ricky Lee Putman†	848 N.W.2d 1	164
2014	Nick Rhoades v. State of Iowa· Dissent†	848 N.W.2d 22	156
2012	State of Iowa v. Charles James David Oliver†	812 N.W.2d 636	156

Showing the 15 most-cited of 127 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 B. Zager on?: Bruce B. Zager 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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15 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).