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 1943 / Served to 1955

John E. Mulroney

Justice, Iowa Supreme Court

John E. Mulroney was a Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1943. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1896–1979
Tenure: 1943–1955 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1943	Iowa Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Creighton University
Upper Iowa University

Judicial Record

In our data, Mulroney authored 225 published opinions for the court (1943–1955), plus 41 dissents and 20 concurrences. Most cited: Kuiken v. Garrett (87 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. 43 of these were attributed to Mulroney 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
1952	Kuiken v. Garrett· Concurrence†	51 N.W.2d 149	87
1948	Dickinson v. Porter· Dissent	35 N.W.2d 66	76
1953	Ehrhardt v. Ruan Transport Corp.· Concurrence†	61 N.W.2d 696	52
1943	Benschoter v. Hakes	8 N.W.2d 481	49
1943	Hayes v. Stunkard	10 N.W.2d 19	47
1954	Hassebroch v. Weaver Construction Company· Dissent†	67 N.W.2d 549	45
1944	Gilchrist v. Bierring· Dissent	14 N.W.2d 724	45
1955	City of Ames v. State Tax Commission· Dissent†	71 N.W.2d 15	38
1949	Darnall v. Day· Dissent	37 N.W.2d 277	37
1950	May's Drug Stores, Inc. v. State Tax Commission	45 N.W.2d 245	36
1947	McKeon v. Brammer	29 N.W.2d 518	36
1950	King Features Syndicate v. Courrier	43 N.W.2d 718	35
1953	Nedrow v. Michigan-Wisconsin Pipe Line Co.	61 N.W.2d 687	33
1951	State v. Kobylasz· Dissent†	47 N.W.2d 167	33
1943	O'Brien v. Biegger· Dissent	11 N.W.2d 412	32

Showing the 15 most-cited of 286 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 John E. Mulroney on?: John E. Mulroney 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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12 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).