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 1932 / Served to 1942

Richard F. Mitchell

Justice, Iowa Supreme Court

Richard F. Mitchell was a Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1932. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1932–1942 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1932	Iowa Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Mitchell authored 396 published opinions for the court (1933–1942), plus 59 dissents and 9 concurrences. Most cited: Federal Land Bank v. Wilmarth (61 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. 4 of these were attributed to Mitchell 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
1934	Federal Land Bank v. Wilmarth· Dissent	252 N.W. 507	61
1938	Montanick Ex Rel. Montanick v. McMillin	280 N.W. 608	59
1934	State v. Wheelock· Dissent	254 N.W. 313	42
1942	State v. Kneedy· Dissent	3 N.W.2d 611	41
1934	Des Moines Joint Stock Land Bank v. Nordholm· Concurrence	253 N.W. 701	39
1938	State v. Graff· Dissent	290 N.W. 97	37
1935	Clendenning v. Simerman	263 N.W. 248	35
1940	State v. Weltha· Concurrence	292 N.W. 148	33
1933	Goodlove v. Logan	251 N.W. 39	33
1942	State Ex Rel. Weede v. Iowa Southern Utilities Co. of Delaware· Dissent	2 N.W.2d 372	31
1937	State v. Van Trump	275 N.W. 569	31
1937	Vilas v. Iowa State Board of Assessment & Review	273 N.W. 338	30
1936	Duncan v. City of Des Moines· Concurrence	268 N.W. 547	30
1934	Boles v. Hotel Maytag Co.· Dissent	253 N.W. 515	29
1935	Diederich v. Tri-City Railway Co.	258 N.W. 899	28

Showing the 15 most-cited of 464 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 Richard F. Mitchell on?: Richard F. Mitchell 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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10 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).