Iowa Governor signs bill dealing with judicial appointments into law

April 25, 2011

Iowa: Gov. Terry E. Branstad signed Senate File 326 into law on April 20, 2011. The bill deals with the appointment of judicial nominating commissioners, senior judges, and other judicial officers. It passed the House on April 6th with 93-2 votes in favor. It was then unanimously passed by the Senate (48-0) on April 11th.

Topics covered in the bill include:

Judicial commissioners

• Each county in a judicial election district may have only one judicial nominating commissioner. The exception is if all of the counties in the district have more than one commissioner or if the number of appointed commissioners is greater than the number of counties.

Judicial appointments

• The chief justice of the state Supreme Court may delay judicial appointments to court vacancies for up to one year for budgetary reasons.
• If a judgeship becomes vacant, the chief justice may reapportion the judgeship to another judicial election district prior to selecting a new judge. This would only happen if there is a "substantial disparity" between the number of judges and the workload of a district. The chief justice must decide if the judgeship would be more helpful to a different district.
• A district associate judge must be a resident of the judicial election district to which they are appointed and serve.
• A magistrate must live in either the county to which they are appointed to service or in a contiguous county.
• The terms for senior judges were changed from two years to one year.M

Footnotes

Iowa courts

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Federal courts:

Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals • U.S. District Court: Northern District of Iowa, Southern District of Iowa • U.S. Bankruptcy Court: Northern District of Iowa, Southern District of Iowa

State courts:

Iowa Supreme Court • Iowa Court of Appeals • Iowa district courts

State resources:

Courts in Iowa • Iowa judicial elections • Judicial selection in Iowa