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 1933 / Served to 1938

John W. Anderson

Justice, Iowa Supreme Court

John W. Anderson was a Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1933. They previously served on the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1933–1938 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1904	Alabama Court of Civil Appeals	–	–
1933	Iowa Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Anderson authored 196 published opinions for the court (1932–1938), plus 3 dissents. Most cited: Smith v. Thompson (45 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. 2 of these were attributed to Anderson 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
1934	Smith v. Thompson	258 N.W. 190	45
1934	Morton v. Equitable Life Insurance	254 N.W. 325	39
1933	State v. Kindy Optical Co.	248 N.W. 332	36
1935	Engle v. Nelson	263 N.W. 505	30
1934	Hart v. Stence	257 N.W. 434	25
1937	In Re Estate of Fitzgerald	272 N.W. 117	21
1938	Samuelson v. Sherrill	280 N.W. 596	20
1938	Orris v. Whipple	280 N.W. 617	19
1938	Wittrock v. Newcom	277 N.W. 286	19
1934	Allen v. Wegman	254 N.W. 74	19
1937	Bletzer v. Wilson	276 N.W. 836	18
1936	Wright v. What Cheer Clay Products Co.	267 N.W. 92	18
1933	Potter v. Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance	247 N.W. 669	18
1935	Stookesberry v. Burgher	262 N.W. 820	17
1933	Bennett v. Bradley	249 N.W. 651	17

Showing the 15 most-cited of 199 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 W. Anderson on?: John W. Anderson 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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5 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).