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 2018 / Active

Susan Christensen

Chief Justice, Iowa Supreme Court

Susan Christensen is a Chief Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, serving since 2018. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2018 · 8 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2018	Iowa Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Christensen authored 13 published opinions for the court (2018–2019), plus 1 concurrence. Most cited: In the Interest of M.D., K.T., G.A., E.A. and S.A., Minor Children (142 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. 14 of these were attributed to Christensen 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
2018	In the Interest of M.D., K.T., G.A., E.A. and S.A., Minor Children· Concurrence†	921 N.W.2d 229	142
2019	State of Iowa v. Scottize Danyelle Brown†	930 N.W.2d 840	135
2018	State of Iowa v. Owen F. Benson†	919 N.W.2d 237	80
2019	Larry R. Hedlund v. State of Iowa†	930 N.W.2d 707	61
2019	Cheryl Albaugh v. The Reserve†	930 N.W.2d 676	27
2019	Eerieanna Good and Carol Beal v. Iowa Department of Human Services†	924 N.W.2d 853	19
2019	Iowa Supreme Court Attorney Disciplinary Board v. Matthew L. Noel†	923 N.W.2d 575	17
2019	Ross Barker v. Iowa Department of Public Safety†	922 N.W.2d 581	17
2019	Shelli R. Freer, Individually and as Administrator of the Estate of Michael Sansom, Individually v. DAC, Inc. d/b/a Prairie House†	929 N.W.2d 685	16
2018	Iowa Supreme Court Attorney Disciplinary Board v. Melissa Nine†	920 N.W.2d 825	12
2019	Michael Jefferson v. Iowa District Court for Scott County†	926 N.W.2d 519	11
2019	Ames 2304, LLC v. City of Ames, Zoning Board of Adjustment†	924 N.W.2d 863	8
2019	Wells Fargo Equipment Finance Inc. v. Jason Retterath and Analia Retterath†	928 N.W.2d 1	7
2019	Serena Konrardy and Carrie Rigdon, n/k/a Carrie Burmeister v. Vincent Angerer Trust and Dewitt Bank and Trust Company, as Trustee of the Vincent Angerer Trust†	925 N.W.2d 620	6

Showing the 14 most-cited of 14 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 is Susan Christensen on?: Susan Christensen is a Chief 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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8 years on the Iowa Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-07-02. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).