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 1965 / Served to 1972

Francis H. Becker

Justice, Iowa Supreme Court

Francis H. Becker was a Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1965. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1915–2011
Tenure: 1965–1972 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1965	Iowa Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Becker authored 174 published opinions for the court (1965–1972), plus 65 dissents and 27 concurrences. Most cited: Hawkeye-Security Insurance Co. v. Ford Motor Co. (100 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. 105 of these were attributed to Becker 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
1970	Hawkeye-Security Insurance Co. v. Ford Motor Co.	174 N.W.2d 672	100
1966	Iowa Power and Light Co. v. Abild Construction Co.· Concurrence†	144 N.W.2d 303	97
1967	GLARRATANO v. Weitz Company· Concurrence†	147 N.W.2d 824	96
1970	Central Bearings Co. v. Wolverine Insurance Company	179 N.W.2d 443	67
1969	State v. Mayhew· Dissent†	170 N.W.2d 608	65
1971	Ehlers v. Iowa Warehouse Company· Dissent†	188 N.W.2d 368	64
1969	Peters v. Lyons	168 N.W.2d 759	61
1971	Goolsby v. Derby· Dissent†	189 N.W.2d 909	58
1969	Krueger v. Fulton· Dissent†	169 N.W.2d 875	58
1966	Halstead Ex Rel. Lee v. Halstead· Dissent†	144 N.W.2d 861	54
1968	Bengford Ex Rel. Bengford v. Carlem Corp.· Concurrence†	156 N.W.2d 855	53
1969	State v. Bester	167 N.W.2d 705	50
1971	State Ex Rel. Turner v. Iowa State Highway Commission· Concurrence†	186 N.W.2d 141	49
1970	State v. Abodeely	179 N.W.2d 347	47
1971	State v. King· Concurrence†	191 N.W.2d 650	46

Showing the 15 most-cited of 266 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 Francis H. Becker on?: Francis H. Becker 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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7 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).