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 1941 / Served to 1969

Theodore G. Garfield

Justice, Iowa Supreme Court

Theodore G. Garfield was a Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1941. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1894 · age 132
Tenure: 1941–1969 · 28 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1941	Iowa Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Garfield authored 670 published opinions for the court (1940–1980), plus 44 dissents and 8 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Sisco (193 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. 57 of these were attributed to Garfield 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	State v. Sisco· Dissent†	169 N.W.2d 542	193
1960	Bradshaw v. Iowa Methodist Hospital	101 N.W.2d 167	100
1961	Shover v. Iowa Lutheran Hospital	107 N.W.2d 85	92
1966	Gottschalk v. Sueppel	140 N.W.2d 866	88
1957	Iowa State Highway Commission v. Smith	82 N.W.2d 755	86
1948	Dickinson v. Porter	35 N.W.2d 66	76
1958	Law Ex Rel. Law v. Hemmingsen	89 N.W.2d 386	75
1956	Soreide v. Vilas & Company	78 N.W.2d 41	71
1947	State v. Hofer	28 N.W.2d 475	68
1949	Eaves v. City of Ottumwa	38 N.W.2d 761	67
1969	State v. Mayhew	170 N.W.2d 608	65
1947	Jackson v. Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad	30 N.W.2d 97	63
1964	Boyer v. Iowa High School Athletic Association	127 N.W.2d 606	61
1962	Maytag Company v. Alward	112 N.W.2d 654	59
1957	Sears, Roebuck and Company v. Poling	81 N.W.2d 462	58

Showing the 15 most-cited of 722 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 Theodore G. Garfield on?: Theodore G. Garfield 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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28 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).