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 1902 / Served to 1923

Silas M. Weaver

Justice, Iowa Supreme Court

Silas M. Weaver was a Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1902. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1902–1923 · 21 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1902	Iowa Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Weaver authored 1,301 published opinions for the court (1902–1923), plus 69 dissents and 26 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Tonn (98 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. 1,387 of these were attributed to Weaver 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
1923	State v. Tonn· Dissent†	195 Iowa 94	98
1902	Perkins v. Perkins†	116 Iowa 253	91
1906	McGuire v. Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad†	131 Iowa 340	90
1910	Baker v. Syfritt†	147 Iowa 49	88
1912	Curtis v. Armagast†	158 Iowa 507	85
1902	State v. Phillips†	118 Iowa 660	79
1904	Ormsby v. Graham†	123 Iowa 202	78
1909	Arnd v. Aylesworth†	145 Iowa 185	75
1907	Ranck v. City of Cedar Rapids†	134 Iowa 563	68
1902	Cedar Rapids Water Co. v. City of Cedar Rapids†	118 Iowa 234	66
1917	Bridenstine v. Iowa City Electric Railway Co.†	181 Iowa 1124	62
1906	Martin v. Des Moines Edison Light Co.†	131 Iowa 724	62
1904	Morse v. Times-Republican Printing Co.†	124 Iowa 707	60
1904	Archer v. Jacobs†	125 Iowa 467	59
1905	Ross v. Board of Supervisors†	128 Iowa 427	58

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,396 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 Silas M. Weaver on?: Silas M. Weaver 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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21 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).