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 1983 / Served to 1987

Charles Robert Wolle

Justice, Iowa Supreme Court

Charles Robert Wolle was a Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1983. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1935 · age 91
Tenure: 1983–1987 · 4 yrs
Education: Harvard 1959

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1983	Iowa Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Harvard University

A.B.

1959

Judicial Record

In our data, Wolle authored 24 published opinions for the court (1983–1987), plus 16 dissents and 12 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Myers (184 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. 52 of these were attributed to Wolle 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
1986	State v. Myers· Dissent†	382 N.W.2d 91	184
1986	DeBurkarte v. Louvar· Concurrence†	393 N.W.2d 131	121
1983	Audubon-Exira Ready Mix, Inc. v. Illinois Central Gulf Railroad· Dissent†	335 N.W.2d 148	99
1986	Miller v. Boone County Hospital· Dissent†	394 N.W.2d 776	88
1985	American States Insurance Co. v. Estate of Tollari· Dissent†	362 N.W.2d 519	46
1984	State v. Clarke†	343 N.W.2d 158	45
1983	State v. Bond†	340 N.W.2d 276	45
1984	Nanke v. Napier· Dissent†	346 N.W.2d 520	42
1985	Nichols v. Westfield Industries, Ltd.· Concurrence†	380 N.W.2d 392	39
1986	Koppes v. Pearson†	384 N.W.2d 381	37
1986	State v. Kraus· Dissent†	397 N.W.2d 671	36
1987	State v. Bessenecker· Dissent†	404 N.W.2d 134	34
1985	Rinkleff v. Knox· Concurrence†	375 N.W.2d 262	34
1984	State v. Nims· Concurrence†	357 N.W.2d 608	33
1987	State v. Vincik†	398 N.W.2d 788	32

Showing the 15 most-cited of 52 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 Charles Robert Wolle on?: Charles Robert Wolle 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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4 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).