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 1972 / Served to 1999

K David Harris

Justice, Iowa Supreme Court

K David Harris was a Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1972. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1927 · age 99
Tenure: 1972–1999 · 27 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1972	Iowa Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Harris authored 1,266 published opinions for the court (1972–2000), plus 93 dissents and 16 concurrences. Most cited: In the Interest of C.K. (280 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. 225 of these were attributed to Harris 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
1997	In the Interest of C.K.	558 N.W.2d 170	280
1987	In the Interests of A.C.†	415 N.W.2d 609	273
1994	Dunbar v. State	515 N.W.2d 12	197
1986	State v. Myers· Dissent†	382 N.W.2d 91	184
1998	Molo Oil Co. v. River City Ford Truck Sales, Inc.	578 N.W.2d 222	160
1996	In Re the Marriage of Benson	545 N.W.2d 252	156
1974	Inghram Ex Rel. Inghram v. Dairyland Mutual Insurance Co.	215 N.W.2d 239	152
1988	Springer v. Weeks and Leo Co., Inc.· Dissent†	429 N.W.2d 558	134
1994	In the Interest of A.M.H.	516 N.W.2d 867	128
1993	In Re Marriage of Geil	509 N.W.2d 738	126
1984	State v. Blair	347 N.W.2d 416	125
1979	Jackson County Public Hospital v. Public Employment Relations Board· Dissent†	280 N.W.2d 426	124
1998	In Interest of RKB	572 N.W.2d 600	117
1990	State v. Bumpus	459 N.W.2d 619	112
1983	Audubon-Exira Ready Mix, Inc. v. Illinois Central Gulf Railroad	335 N.W.2d 148	99

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,375 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 K David Harris on?: K David Harris 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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27 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).