Each year the Supreme Court’s Term begins on the first Monday in October and usually concludes by the end of June when the last opinions of the Term are released. Contrary to some misperceptions, however, the Justices do not take 3-month summer vacations. Far from it. Petitions for certiorari are filed with the Court throughout the year, totaling approximately 7,000 annually. And then there are emergency orders, which are sought throughout the year, and they have no regard for the season. This year, there have been over 110 emergency applications to the Court, a record number that significantly added to the Court’s workload. The Justices do need time away from the pressures of a Term, however, and they take a deserved break from their building in Washington, DC, when the Court is in recess. But there is no escape from the work itself, and it finds its way to them wherever they travel. Some challenges have been greater than others in delivering work to them.
Justice William O. Douglas was an avid and experienced hiker. There were times when he would hike for days in the wilderness. In one amusing episode, Douglas left his one-page decision on a tree stump for the Portland-based attorneys seeking a temporary restraining order on behalf of their clients. The problem was that they had already hiked the six miles into the Oregon forest the day before to argue their application before Douglas at his campsite. Only one mustered the fortitude to return the next day to retrieve the decision.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist also enjoyed time away in a remote location during the summer. He had a cabin in the woods of Vermont as his retreat. When his grandchildren visited him there, he once found them looking under the beds for a TV because they thought he was hiding one. They learned the joys of reading when they visited him. He also had no telephone there, so he would walk to a phone booth outside of a local general store in the small town nearby, and at precisely 2:00 pm on every Thursday, his office would call the pay phone outside the store and update him on work for the week.
Justice William J. Brennan would drive to Nantucket in the summer, and he had to book a car ferry a year in advance. He never missed those ferry rides, but there were occasional Terms of the Court in the 1970s when he missed the last couple of days of issuing the last opinions of the year from the bench. His clerks reviewed and summarized the cert petitions in DC until Brennan returned on Labor Day, sending Court business to Nantucket for Brennan to work on.
The Court takes great pride, as it should, in completing its work each Term in a timely way. That would not be possible if it didn’t keep up with its work over the summer months, too, no matter where the Justices go.
