The supreme court may answer questions of law certified to it by the supreme court of the United States, a court of appeals of the United States, a United States district court or the highest appellate court or the intermediate appellate court of another state, when requested by the certifying court, if there are involved in a proceeding before it questions of law of this state which may be determinative of the cause then pending in the certifying court and as to which it appears to the certifying court there is no controlling precedent in the decisions of the appellate courts of this state.
Iowa Code § 684A.1
Power to answer
Known as the Uniform Certification of Questions of Law Act
The act spans §§ 684A.1 to 684A.9 (11 sections).
Applied in 10 court decisions — leading case Gregory Baldwin v. City of Estherville, Iowa Matt Reineke, Individually and in His Official Capacity as an Officer of the Estherville Police Department and Matt Hellickson, Individually and in His Official Capacity as an Officer of the Estherville Police Department (2018)
Most recently applied in Inge Smothers v. Rowley Mem. Masonic Home (March 2023)
[C81, §684A.1]
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: Iowa Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain Iowa statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.