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 1953 / Served to 1971

Robert L. Larson

Justice, Iowa Supreme Court

Robert L. Larson was a Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1953. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1898 · age 128
Tenure: 1953–1971 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1953	Iowa Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Larson authored 399 published opinions for the court (1953–1971), plus 43 dissents and 8 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. 69 of these were attributed to Larson 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.· Dissent†	170 N.W.2d 632	172
1969	Ryan v. Kanne	170 N.W.2d 395	97
1963	State v. Post	123 N.W.2d 11	70
1970	State v. Cullison· Dissent†	173 N.W.2d 533	66
1954	Keller v. City of Council Bluffs, Iowa	66 N.W.2d 113	66
1968	Lee Enterprises, Inc v. Iowa State Tax Commission	162 N.W.2d 730	65
1970	W & W Livestock Enterprises, Inc. v. Dennler	179 N.W.2d 484	63
1967	Lessenhop v. Norton	153 N.W.2d 107	62
1965	Consolidated Freightways Corp. of Del. v. Nicholas	137 N.W.2d 900	62
1960	Henderson v. Hawkeye-Security Insurance Company	106 N.W.2d 86	62
1962	State v. Drosos†	253 Iowa 1152	61
1958	Cowman v. Hansen	92 N.W.2d 682	61
1965	State v. Johnson	135 N.W.2d 518	60
1969	Mallory v. Paradise· Concurrence†	173 N.W.2d 264	55
1956	Frost v. Des Moines Still College of Osteopathy & Surgery	79 N.W.2d 306	54

Showing the 15 most-cited of 450 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 Robert L. Larson on?: Robert L. Larson 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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18 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).