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 1941 / Served to 1958

Charles F. Wennerstrum

Justice, Iowa Supreme Court

Charles F. Wennerstrum was a Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1941. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1889 · age 137
Tenure: 1941–1958 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1941	Iowa Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Drake University
Drake University

Judicial Record

In our data, Wennerstrum authored 291 published opinions for the court (1940–1958), plus 22 dissents. Most cited: Nicholson v. City of Des Moines (50 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. 28 of these were attributed to Wennerstrum 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
1954	Nicholson v. City of Des Moines· Dissent†	67 N.W.2d 533	50
1946	Jensen v. Jensen· Dissent	25 N.W.2d 316	49
1951	Thornbury v. Maley	45 N.W.2d 576	45
1956	In Re Baker's Estate	78 N.W.2d 863	40
1949	Detoskey v. Ruan Transport Corp.	40 N.W.2d 4	38
1944	Odegard v. Gregerson	12 N.W.2d 559	38
1948	State v. Cotton· Dissent	33 N.W.2d 880	34
1956	Davis v. Jones	78 N.W.2d 6	32
1948	Hall v. Crow	34 N.W.2d 195	32
1944	Coonley v. Lowden· Dissent	12 N.W.2d 870	31
1943	Bachelder v. Woodside	9 N.W.2d 464	31
1951	State v. Warren	47 N.W.2d 221	29
1949	State v. Bruntlett	36 N.W.2d 450	29
1943	Dalbey Bros. Lumber Co. v. Crispin	12 N.W.2d 277	28
1941	Bascom v. District Court of Cerro Gordo County	1 N.W.2d 220	28

Showing the 15 most-cited of 313 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 F. Wennerstrum on?: Charles F. Wennerstrum 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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17 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).