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

M.L. Mason

Justice, Iowa Supreme Court

M.L. Mason 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, Mason authored 222 published opinions for the court (1965–1978), plus 25 dissents and 13 concurrences. Most cited: Schmitt v. Jenkins Truck Lines, Inc. (172 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. 56 of these were attributed to Mason 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	Schmitt v. Jenkins Truck Lines, Inc.	170 N.W.2d 632	172
1967	Chrischilles v. Griswold	150 N.W.2d 94	142
1972	In Re the Marriage of Williams	199 N.W.2d 339	141
1967	Hamilton v. Wosepka	154 N.W.2d 164	116
1967	GLARRATANO v. Weitz Company	147 N.W.2d 824	96
1974	Daboll v. Hoden†	222 N.W.2d 727	89
1973	Mears v. Mears	213 N.W.2d 511	81
1971	Vermeer Ex Rel. Vermeer v. Sneller· Concurrence†	190 N.W.2d 389	81
1972	State v. Jennings· Dissent†	195 N.W.2d 351	80
1968	Janson v. Fulton	162 N.W.2d 438	80
1969	Hedges v. Conder	166 N.W.2d 844	79
1970	Andrews v. Struble	178 N.W.2d 391	76
1976	State v. Pilcher	242 N.W.2d 348	73
1971	Wardlow v. City of Keokuk	190 N.W.2d 439	72
1975	Rinehart v. State	234 N.W.2d 649	71

Showing the 15 most-cited of 260 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 M.L. Mason on?: M.L. Mason 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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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).