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 2008 / Served to 2010

David L. Baker

Justice, Iowa Supreme Court

David L. Baker was a Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, who joined the court in 2008. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 2008–2010 · 2 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2008	Iowa Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of Iowa
University of Iowa

Judicial Record

In our data, Baker authored 39 published opinions for the court (2008–2010). Most cited: State v. Fountain (233 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. 8 of these were attributed to Baker 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
2010	State v. Fountain	786 N.W.2d 260	233
2010	State Of Iowa Vs. Ricardo Ortiz†	789 N.W.2d 761	167
2010	Royal Indemnity Co. v. Factory Mutual Insurance Co.	786 N.W.2d 839	106
2010	Van Sloun v. Agans Bros., Inc.	778 N.W.2d 174	99
2010	In The Interest Of A.h.b., Minor Child, M.l.b., Mother†	791 N.W.2d 687	96
2010	State v. Serrato	787 N.W.2d 462	96
2010	Brokaw v. Winfield-Mt. Union Community School District	788 N.W.2d 386	75
2008	State v. Mitchell	757 N.W.2d 431	73
2009	In Re the Marriage of Brown	776 N.W.2d 644	72
2008	State v. Wade	757 N.W.2d 618	63
2010	State Of Iowa Vs. Scott Allen Hicks†	791 N.W.2d 89	52
2008	State v. Garcia	756 N.W.2d 216	41
2010	William Neal Lawson Vs. Linda Irene Kurtzhals†	792 N.W.2d 251	40
2010	State v. Tripp	776 N.W.2d 855	40
2009	State v. Garrity	765 N.W.2d 592	40

Showing the 15 most-cited of 39 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 David L. Baker on?: David L. Baker 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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2 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).