The month of June once again is here, and, as in years past, attention turns to thoughts of summer, to high school graduations, and to anticipation of the U.S. Supreme Court’s issuance of the term’s most important and contentious rulings. Despite all of the criticism that frequently is directed at the U.S. Supreme Court — some warranted, and the rest, perhaps not so much — rarely does one hear the complaint that the nation’s highest court is taking too long to decide the cases pending before it.
Indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court stays remarkably current in its caseload. For example, by tradition, any case that is argued between October and the end of the following April will be decided before the court adjourns for its summer recess in late June or (on very rare occasion) early July. Thus, the longest that one must wait for a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court (measured as the time between oral argument and the opinion’s issuance) is nine months, and often the wait for decision is much shorter than that.
