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 1971 / Served to 1987

W. Ward Reynoldson

Justice, Iowa Supreme Court

W. Ward Reynoldson was a Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1971. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1920 · age 106
Tenure: 1971–1987 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1971	Iowa Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Reynoldson authored 1,220 published opinions for the court (1971–1987), plus 40 dissents and 23 concurrences. Most cited: In Re the Marriage of Frederici (294 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. 90 of these were attributed to Reynoldson 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
1983	In Re the Marriage of Frederici	338 N.W.2d 156	294
1981	In the Interest of Dameron	306 N.W.2d 743	207
1983	In Re the Marriage of Weidner	338 N.W.2d 351	196
1981	Hunter v. City of Des Moines	300 N.W.2d 121	173
1984	Vinson v. Linn-Mar Community School District	360 N.W.2d 108	155
1972	In Re the Marriage of Williams· Concurrence†	199 N.W.2d 339	141
1984	Taylor v. State	352 N.W.2d 683	134
1980	State v. Marti	290 N.W.2d 570	134
1979	State v. Hildebrand	280 N.W.2d 393	129
1973	Lunday Ex Rel. Lunday v. Vogelmann· Dissent†	213 N.W.2d 904	124
1975	C & J Fertilizer, Inc. v. Allied Mutual Insurance Co.	227 N.W.2d 169	121
1980	Hinkle v. State	290 N.W.2d 28	120
1979	State v. O'CONNELL	275 N.W.2d 197	118
1980	Rudolph v. Iowa Methodist Medical Center· Dissent†	293 N.W.2d 550	115
1974	Brainard v. State· Concurrence†	222 N.W.2d 711	110

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,283 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 W. Ward Reynoldson on?: W. Ward Reynoldson 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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16 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).