Help us improve in just 2 minutes—share your thoughts in our reader survey.
Matthew McDermott (Iowa)
2020 - Present
2030
5
Matthew McDermott is a judge of the Iowa Supreme Court. He assumed office on April 3, 2020. His current term ends on December 31, 2030.
McDermott ran for re-election for judge of the Iowa Supreme Court. He won in the retention election on November 8, 2022.
McDermott first became a member of the court by appointment. He was appointed by Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds on April 3, 2020, to succeed Justice David Wiggins.[1] As of September 2022, McDermott was one of seven judges on the court appointed by a Republican governor. To learn more about this appointment, click here.
In 2020, Ballotpedia published Ballotpedia Courts: State Partisanship, a study examining the partisan affiliation of all state supreme court justices in the country. As part of this study, we assigned each justice a Confidence Score describing our confidence in the degree of partisanship exhibited by the justices' past partisan behavior, before they joined the court.[2] McDermott received a confidence score of Strong Republican.[3] Click here to read more about this study.
Biography
McDermott received his undergraduate degree from the University of Iowa in 2000. He obtained his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law in 2003. During his legal studies, McDermott was an editor of the California Law Review.[4]
McDermott was an attorney in private practice before his state supreme court appointment. He is a former chair of the Iowa State Bar Association's Judicial Administration Committee and former president of its Young Lawyers Division. He was also board president of Iowa Legal Aid.[4]
Elections
2022
See also: Iowa Supreme Court elections, 2022
Iowa Supreme Court, Matthew McDermott's seat
Matthew McDermott was retained to the Iowa Supreme Court on November 8, 2022 with 67.5% of the vote.
Retention Vote |
% |
Votes |
|||
| ✔ | Yes |
67.5
|
605,391 | ||
No |
32.5
|
291,264 | |||
Total Votes |
896,655 | ||||
|
|
Campaign themes
2022
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Matthew McDermott did not complete Ballotpedia's 2022 Candidate Connection survey.
Appointments
2020
Governor Kim Reynolds (R) appointed attorney Matthew McDermott to the Iowa Supreme Court on April 3, 2020. McDermott succeeded Acting Chief Justice David Wiggins, who retired on March 13, 2020.[5][1] McDermott was the governor's fourth nominee to the seven-member supreme court.
At the time of the appointment, the governor would appoint supreme court justices with help from a nominating commission in the event of a vacancy under Iowa law.
Analysis
Ballotpedia Courts: State Partisanship (2020)
Last updated: June 15, 2020
In 2020, Ballotpedia published Ballotpedia Courts: State Partisanship, a study examining the partisan affiliation of all state supreme court justices in the country as of June 15, 2020.
The study presented Confidence Scores that represented our confidence in each justice's degree of partisan affiliation. This was not a measure of where a justice fell on an ideological spectrum, but rather a measure of how much confidence we had that a justice was or had been affiliated with a political party. The scores were based on seven factors, including but not limited to party registration.[6]
The five resulting categories of Confidence Scores were:
- Strong Democrat
- Mild Democrat
- Indeterminate[7]
- Mild Republican
- Strong Republican
This justice's Confidence Score, as well as the factors contributing to that score, is presented below. The information below was current as of June 2020.
Matthew
McDermott
Iowa
- Partisan Confidence Score:
Strong Republican - Judicial Selection Method:
Assisted appointment through hybrid judicial nominating commission - Key Factors:
- Donated over $2,000 to Republican candidates
- Held political office as a Republican
- Was a registered Republican before 2020
Partisan Profile
Details:
McDermott donated $2,300 to Republican candidates and organizations. He served as Legal Counsel to the Republican Party of Iowa from 2007 to 2012. McDermott was a registered Republican prior to 2020. He was appointed by Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) in 2020. At the time of his appointment, Iowa was a Republican trifecta.
State supreme court judicial selection in Iowa
- See also: Judicial selection in Iowa
The seven justices on the Iowa Supreme Court are selected through the assisted appointment method. When a vacancy occurs on the supreme court, the State Judicial Nominating Commission submits a list of three potential nominees to the governor, who appoints one to serve as a judge. The commission consists of 17 members—nine appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Iowa State Senate and eight (two from each congressional district) elected by lawyers.[8]
Iowa law states that no more than a simple majority of the state nominating commission may be of the same gender.[9]
Newly appointed judges serve for one year after their appointment. They must then compete in a yes-no retention election (occurring during the regularly scheduled general election) if they wish to remain on the court. They then serve eight-year terms.[10]
Qualifications
To serve on this court, a judge must be:[10]
- licensed to practice law in the state;
- a member of the Iowa bar;
- a resident of the state, district, or county to which they are appointed; and
- under the age of 72.
Note: Retirement at 72 is mandatory, though older judges may apply to become a senior judge. Senior judges must work a minimum of 13 weeks a year and are to receive a monthly retirement annuity and an annual stipend. They must retire at age 78 (or 80, if reappointed by the supreme court for additional one-year terms).[5]
Chief justice
The chief justice of the supreme court is elected by peer vote and serves a two-year term.[10]
Vacancies
If a midterm vacancy occurs on the court, the seat is filled as it normally would be if the vacancy occurred at the end of a judge's term. A judicial nominating commission recommends qualified candidates to the governor and the governor selects a successor from that list. The new appointee serves for at least one year and then stands for retention.[8]
The map below highlights how vacancies are filled in state supreme courts across the country.
See also
2022 Elections
External links
|
Officeholder Iowa Supreme Court |
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Office of the Governor of Iowa, "Gov. Reynolds appoints Matthew McDermott to the IA Supreme Court," April 3, 2020
- ↑ We calculated confidence scores by collecting several data points such as party registration, donations, and previous political campaigns.
- ↑ The five possible confidence scores were: Strong Democrat, Mild Democrat, Indeterminate, Mild Republican, and Strong Republican.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Iowa Judicial Branch, "Matthew McDermott," accessed July 15, 2021
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 WHOTV.com, "Iowa Supreme Court Acting Chief Justice Announces Retirement," January 10, 2020 Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; name "retire" defined multiple times with different content - ↑ The seven factors were party registration, donations made to partisan candidates, donations made to political parties, donations received from political parties or bodies with clear political affiliation, participation in political campaigns, the partisanship of the body responsible for appointing the justice, and state trifecta status when the justice joined the court.
- ↑ An Indeterminate score indicates that there is either not enough information about the justice’s partisan affiliations or that our research found conflicting partisan affiliations.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Iowa Judicial Nominating Commissions, "State Judicial Nominating Commission," accessed September 13, 2021
- ↑ Iowa Legislature, "CHAPTER 46, 46.1 and 46.2," accessed September 13, 2021
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 National Center for State Courts, "Methods of Judicial Selection: Iowa," September 13, 2021
| ||||||||||
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
