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 2003 / Former Justice

David Wiggins

Justice, Iowa Supreme Court

David Wiggins was a Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, who joined the court in 2003. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 2003 · 23 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2003	Iowa Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Wiggins authored 285 published opinions for the court (2003–2019), plus 56 dissents and 42 concurrences. Most cited: In Re P.L. (1,536 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. 246 of these were attributed to Wiggins 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	In Re P.L.	778 N.W.2d 33	1,536
2012	Lynn G. Lamasters Vs. State of Iowa· Concurrence†	821 N.W.2d 856	493
2012	State of Iowa v. Allen Bradley Clay†	824 N.W.2d 488	476
2013	In RE the Marriage of Rachel A. McDermott and Stephen J. McDermott Upon the Petition of Rachel A. McDermott†	827 N.W.2d 671	401
2008	State v. Maxwell	743 N.W.2d 185	375
2006	State v. Shanahan	712 N.W.2d 121	257
2017	State of Iowa v. Kelvin Plain Sr.· Concurrence†	898 N.W.2d 801	249
2018	Jacob Lee Schmidt v. State of Iowa†	909 N.W.2d 778	226
2015	In Re the Marriage of Steven Michael Gust and Linda Leann Gust Upon the Petition of Steven Michael Gust· Concurrence†	858 N.W.2d 402	224
2004	State v. Tague	676 N.W.2d 197	219
2005	State v. Seering· Concurrence†	701 N.W.2d 655	214
2013	State of Iowa v. Jeffrey K. Ragland· Concurrence†	836 N.W.2d 107	211
2004	Auen v. Alcoholic Beverages Division of Iowa Department of Commerce	679 N.W.2d 586	204
2016	State of Iowa v. Kenneth Osborne Ary†	877 N.W.2d 686	203
2014	State of Iowa v. Patrick Michael Dudley†	856 N.W.2d 668	197

Showing the 15 most-cited of 383 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 Wiggins on?: David Wiggins 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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23 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).