The Supreme Court term ends the day before the first Monday in October, but the justices usually finish issuing opinions and leave the bench in late June or early July. Those two dates answer two different questions. The formal legal term is a full twelve months. The active session, when arguments are heard and decisions come down, occupies only about nine of them.
The Formal End Date
Federal law sets a start date but no end date for the Court’s work. Under 28 U.S.C. § 2, the term begins on the first Monday in October each year.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 2 – Terms of Court Supreme Court Rule 3 fills in the rest: the term is continuous, running from that first Monday in October through the day before the first Monday in October the following year.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. Rules of the Supreme Court of the United States – Rule 3 So October Term 2025 runs from October 2025 through early October 2026. Any case still pending at the end of one term automatically carries into the next.
That is the technical answer. It is rarely what people mean when they ask about the end of a term.
When the Justices Finish Issuing Opinions
The active session ends when the Court hands down its last opinions and recesses for the summer. That day almost always falls in late June, occasionally in early July.3Supreme Court of the United States. The Court and Its Procedures
The Court hears its final oral arguments in April. After that, the justices stop taking the bench for new cases and turn entirely to finishing the opinions still in progress. Opinion days become more frequent as June approaches, sometimes several per week. On each of those days the Court convenes at 10:00 a.m., and the author of each decision reads a summary from the bench. Justices announce opinions in reverse order of seniority, with the Chief Justice last. A dissenting justice may also read a summary, which is generally understood as a signal that the disagreement runs deep.4Supreme Court of the United States. Calendar Info/Key Full opinions post to the Court’s website at the same time.
The most closely divided and high-profile cases almost always come last. Cases where the justices disagree sharply require additional rounds of drafting as majority opinions and dissents respond to each other, and that pushes them to the back of the calendar. The result is a concentrated burst of major rulings in the final days of June.
Why Some Terms Run Into July
Late June is the pattern, not the rule. A heavier caseload, an unusually high number of divided decisions, or external disruptions can push final opinion days into July. When five or more justices cannot agree, each new draft exchange eats into the calendar.
The statute also gives the Court explicit authority to hold “adjourned or special terms as may be necessary.”1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 2 – Terms of Court That power has been used rarely, but it means the Court is never truly locked into the standard calendar if circumstances demand otherwise.
What Happens After the Last Opinion Day
The end of the active session is not the end of the Court’s work. Emergency applications keep coming in through the summer: requests for stays of execution, injunctions blocking lower court orders, bail petitions, and challenges to government actions. These orders are sometimes called the “shadow docket” because they typically issue with little or no written explanation and no disclosure of how individual justices voted.
Each justice is assigned to one or more federal circuits and serves as the initial gatekeeper for emergency applications from that circuit.5Supreme Court of the United States. Circuit Assignments The assigned justice can act alone on a temporary stay or refer the application to the full Court. By some counts, the justices have had roughly two dozen emergency applications pending at any given time during a typical summer.
Petitions for review also pile up. The Court receives more than 8,000 petitions a year asking it to hear a case, and a large share accumulate during the summer when no conferences are held to act on them. By late September, roughly 2,000 petitions are waiting. The Court addresses that backlog in a single marathon session known as the “long conference,” held in late September just before the new term opens. Over the past decade, the Court has granted as few as five and as many as fifteen petitions out of the roughly 2,000 considered there. Grants are usually announced a few days after the conference, and denials come out on the first Monday in October, the day the new term formally begins and the twelve-month cycle starts over.3Supreme Court of the United States. The Court and Its Procedures