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 1986 / Served to 2006

Louis A. Lavorato

Justice, Iowa Supreme Court

Louis A. Lavorato was a Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1986. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1934 · age 92
Tenure: 1986–2006 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1986	Iowa Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Drake University
Drake University

Judicial Record

In our data, Lavorato authored 210 published opinions for the court (1986–2006), plus 21 dissents and 6 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Straw (597 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. 60 of these were attributed to Lavorato 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
2006	State v. Straw· Dissent†	709 N.W.2d 128	597
2002	DeVoss v. State	648 N.W.2d 56	264
2003	State v. Reeves	670 N.W.2d 199	208
2001	State v. Rodriquez· Dissent†	636 N.W.2d 234	177
2004	State v. Sullivan	679 N.W.2d 19	169
1991	A.Y. McDonald Industries, Inc. v. Insurance Co. of North America	475 N.W.2d 607	158
1996	In Re the Marriage of Benson· Dissent†	545 N.W.2d 252	156
2006	State v. Tate· Dissent†	710 N.W.2d 237	154
2002	State v. Biddle	652 N.W.2d 191	150
1988	State v. Plaster	424 N.W.2d 226	139
2002	State v. Kreps	650 N.W.2d 636	136
2001	Gibson v. ITT Hartford Ins. Co.	621 N.W.2d 388	136
1988	State v. Jeffries	430 N.W.2d 728	129
1986	DeBurkarte v. Louvar	393 N.W.2d 131	121
2002	State v. Webb	648 N.W.2d 72	112

Showing the 15 most-cited of 237 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 Louis A. Lavorato on?: Louis A. Lavorato 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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20 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).