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 1913 / Served to 1920

Frank R. Gaynor

Justice, Iowa Supreme Court

Frank R. Gaynor was a Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1913. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1913–1920 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1913	Iowa Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Gaynor authored 395 published opinions for the court (1913–1920), plus 1 dissent and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Delbridge v. Sears (59 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. 395 of these were attributed to Gaynor 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
1916	Delbridge v. Sears†	179 Iowa 526	59
1915	Weber v. Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad†	175 Iowa 358	55
1915	Goss v. Lanin†	170 Iowa 57	41
1914	State v. Foxton†	166 Iowa 181	36
1913	Carpenter ex rel. Carpenter v. Campbell Automobile Co.†	159 Iowa 52	35
1919	Bidwell Coal Co. v. Davidson†	187 Iowa 809	34
1915	Zinkula v. Zinkula†	171 Iowa 287	34
1913	Ney v. Eastern Iowa Telephone Co.†	162 Iowa 525	34
1920	Snyder v. Nixon†	188 Iowa 779	29
1916	Noyes v. Des Moines Club†	178 Iowa 815	29
1913	Clemens v. Chicaco, Rock Island & Pac. Ry. Co.†	163 Iowa 499	29
1918	State v. Weaver· Concurrence†	182 Iowa 921	27
1914	Bales v. Bales†	164 Iowa 257	27
1914	Haigh v. White Way Laundry Co.†	164 Iowa 143	27
1920	Chesley v. Waterloo, Cedar Falls & Northern Railroad†	188 Iowa 1004	26

Showing the 15 most-cited of 397 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 Frank R. Gaynor on?: Frank R. Gaynor 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).