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 1935 / Served to 1937

James M. Parsons

Justice, Iowa Supreme Court

James M. Parsons was a Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1935. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1935–1937 · 2 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1935	Iowa Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Parsons authored 103 published opinions for the court (1935–1937), plus 1 dissent and 1 concurrence. Most cited: State v. Johnson (32 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.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1936	State v. Johnson	264 N.W. 596	32
1936	Duncan v. City of Des Moines	268 N.W. 547	30
1937	Shirkey v. Keokuk County	275 N.W. 706	26
1937	Sullivan v. Harris	276 N.W. 88	22
1937	McMurray v. Faust	276 N.W. 95	20
1937	Kennedy v. State Board of Assessment & Review	276 N.W. 205	19
1935	Smith v. Sioux City Stock Yards Co.	260 N.W. 531	18
1935	In Re Disbarment of Decaro	262 N.W. 132	14
1937	Larsen v. Independent School District	272 N.W. 632	12
1936	Conlee v. Conlee	269 N.W. 259	12
1936	Horn v. Horn	265 N.W. 148	12
1935	Iowa Electric Light & Power Co. v. Incorporated Town of Grand Junction· Concurrence	264 N.W. 84	12
1935	Fitzgerald v. State	260 N.W. 681	12
1935	Elliott v. Till	259 N.W. 460	12
1937	Bates v. Nichols	274 N.W. 32	11

Showing the 15 most-cited of 105 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 M. Parsons on?: James M. Parsons was a Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court.

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).