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 1938 / Served to 1962

Ralph A. Oliver

Justice, Iowa Supreme Court

Ralph A. Oliver was a Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1938. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1886 · age 140
Tenure: 1938–1962 · 24 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1938	Iowa Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Oliver authored 466 published opinions for the court (1937–1962), plus 29 dissents and 17 concurrences. Most cited: Wilson v. Iowa State Highway Commission (58 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. 52 of these were attributed to Oliver 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
1958	Wilson v. Iowa State Highway Commission	90 N.W.2d 161	58
1942	Ryan v. City of Emmetsburg	4 N.W.2d 435	58
1951	State v. Rutledge	47 N.W.2d 251	56
1955	State v. Di Paglia	71 N.W.2d 601	50
1947	Birmingham v. Rice Bros.	26 N.W.2d 39	45
1956	Fitzgerald v. Hale	78 N.W.2d 509	42
1956	Bremmer v. Journal-Tribune Publishing Company	76 N.W.2d 762	41
1954	State v. Williams	62 N.W.2d 742	41
1957	Riter v. Keokuk Electro-Metals Company	82 N.W.2d 151	40
1956	In Re Baker's Estate· Dissent†	78 N.W.2d 863	40
1958	Jacobson v. Leap· Dissent†	88 N.W.2d 919	39
1949	Lewis v. Minnesota Mutual Life Insurance· Dissent	37 N.W.2d 316	37
1959	State v. McLaughlin· Concurrence†	94 N.W.2d 303	35
1958	Weik v. Ace Rents Inc.	87 N.W.2d 314	35
1954	Brackett v. City of Des Moines	67 N.W.2d 542	34

Showing the 15 most-cited of 512 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 Ralph A. Oliver on?: Ralph A. Oliver 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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24 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).