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 1935 / Served to 1940

Wilson H. Hamilton

Justice, Iowa Supreme Court

Wilson H. Hamilton was a Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1935. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1935–1940 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1935	Iowa Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Hamilton authored 218 published opinions for the court (1935–1940), plus 7 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Mescher v. Brogan (52 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.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1937	Mescher v. Brogan	272 N.W. 645	52
1937	Pazen v. Des Moines Transportation Co.	272 N.W. 126	37
1939	Reynolds v. Skelly Oil Co.	287 N.W. 823	36
1939	Ellison Ex Rel. Nardicchio v. Platts	286 N.W. 413	33
1939	Edwards v. Kirk	288 N.W. 875	30
1937	Vance v. Grohe	274 N.W. 902	28
1937	Elk River Coal & Lumber Co. v. Funk	271 N.W. 204	28
1937	Rogers v. Jefferson	275 N.W. 874	27
1935	State v. Manning	259 N.W. 213	27
1938	W. J. Sandberg Co. v. Iowa State Board of Assessment & Review	278 N.W. 643	26
1935	Bauer v. Reavell	260 N.W. 39	25
1938	Child v. Smith	282 N.W. 316	24
1936	Sioux City v. Western Asphalt Paving Corp.	271 N.W. 624	23
1936	State v. City of Des Moines	266 N.W. 41	23
1940	Higbee v. Walsh	294 N.W. 597	22

Showing the 15 most-cited of 226 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 Wilson H. Hamilton on?: Wilson H. Hamilton 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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5 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).