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 1965 / Served to 1978

Maurice E. Rawlings

Justice, Iowa Supreme Court

Maurice E. Rawlings was a Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1965. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1906 · age 120
Tenure: 1965–1978 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1965	Iowa Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Rawlings authored 246 published opinions for the court (1965–1978), plus 72 dissents and 22 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Sisco (193 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. 122 of these were attributed to Rawlings 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
1969	State v. Sisco	169 N.W.2d 542	193
1968	Schantz v. Schantz	163 N.W.2d 398	150
1966	Graham v. Worthington	146 N.W.2d 626	118
1973	Kersten Co., Inc. v. Department of Social Services· Dissent†	207 N.W.2d 117	91
1972	Holden v. Construction MacHinery Company	202 N.W.2d 348	82
1971	Davenport Water Co. v. Iowa State Commerce Commission	190 N.W.2d 583	81
1972	State v. Jennings	195 N.W.2d 351	80
1966	Tice v. Wilmington Chemical Corporation	141 N.W.2d 616	70
1974	State v. Martin	217 N.W.2d 536	69
1970	State v. Cullison	173 N.W.2d 533	66
1970	FIRST NATIONAL BANK IN LENOX v. Brown	181 N.W.2d 178	63
1968	State v. Allnutt· Dissent†	156 N.W.2d 266	62
1967	Dailey v. Holiday Distributing Corporation	151 N.W.2d 477	62
1976	State v. Donnell· Dissent†	239 N.W.2d 575	61
1973	State v. Gorham	206 N.W.2d 908	61

Showing the 15 most-cited of 340 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 Maurice E. Rawlings on?: Maurice E. Rawlings 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

13 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).