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 1982 / Served to 2006

James Harvey Carter

Justice, Iowa Supreme Court

James Harvey Carter was a Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1982. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1935 · age 91
Tenure: 1982–2006 · 24 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1982	Iowa Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Carter authored 375 published opinions for the court (1982–2006), plus 111 dissents and 61 concurrences. Most cited: Ledezma v. State (667 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. 268 of these were attributed to Carter 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
2001	Ledezma v. State· Dissent†	626 N.W.2d 134	667
2006	State v. Newell· Concurrence†	710 N.W.2d 6	231
1999	State v. Schminkey· Dissent†	597 N.W.2d 785	209
2004	State v. Truesdell· Dissent†	679 N.W.2d 611	187
2006	State v. Heemstra· Dissent†	721 N.W.2d 549	168
2004	Racing Ass'n of Central Iowa v. Fitzgerald· Dissent†	675 N.W.2d 1	165
1989	In Re the Marriage of Francis· Dissent†	442 N.W.2d 59	159
2000	State v. Grandberry	619 N.W.2d 399	151
1984	Harsha v. State Savings Bank· Concurrence†	346 N.W.2d 791	150
1988	Springer v. Weeks and Leo Co., Inc.	429 N.W.2d 558	134
1998	State v. Sailer	587 N.W.2d 756	123
1982	Goetzman v. Wichern· Dissent†	327 N.W.2d 742	117
2003	State v. Dullard· Dissent†	668 N.W.2d 585	111
2000	Interstate Power Co. v. Insurance Co. of North America	603 N.W.2d 751	108
1995	Red Giant Oil Co. v. Lawlor	528 N.W.2d 524	103

Showing the 15 most-cited of 547 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 James Harvey Carter on?: James Harvey Carter 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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24 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).