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 1998 / Former Justice

Mark S. Cady

Justice, Iowa Supreme Court

Mark S. Cady was a Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1998. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1953 · age 73
Tenure: 1998 · 27 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1998	Iowa Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Cady authored 358 published opinions for the court (1999–2019), plus 61 dissents and 42 concurrences. Most cited: In The Interest Of D.W., Minor Child, A.M.W., Mother (1,344 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. 224 of these were attributed to Cady 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
2010	In The Interest Of D.W., Minor Child, A.M.W., Mother†	791 N.W.2d 703	1,344
2002	Meier v. SENECAUT III	641 N.W.2d 532	1,268
2000	In the Interest of C.B.†	611 N.W.2d 489	1,133
2006	In The Interest Of J.e., Minor Child, R.e., Mother Vs. State Of Iowa· Concurrence†	723 N.W.2d 793	816
2002	State v. Formaro	638 N.W.2d 720	760
2001	Ledezma v. State	626 N.W.2d 134	667
2003	State v. Graves· Dissent†	668 N.W.2d 860	406
2014	In the Interest of J.S. & N.S., Minor Children, A.S., Mother· Dissent†	846 N.W.2d 36	351
2009	State v. Bruegger· Dissent†	773 N.W.2d 862	342
2006	In Re the Marriage of Sullins	715 N.W.2d 242	334
2005	In Re the Marriage of Okland	699 N.W.2d 260	328
2014	State v. Lyle†	854 N.W.2d 378	301
2017	State of Iowa v. Kelvin Plain Sr.· Concurrence†	898 N.W.2d 801	249
2003	Harrington v. State· Dissent†	659 N.W.2d 509	227
2009	Varnum v. Brien	763 N.W.2d 862	221

Showing the 15 most-cited of 461 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 Mark S. Cady on?: Mark S. Cady 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).