7 www.loubar.org January 2026 Don’t roll the dice on your practice’s future. Sure, there is a chance you’ll never need us. But why take that chance? Lawyers Mutual is dedicated to Kentucky lawyers and makes your work our priority. Call (502) 568-6100 or visit LMICK.com for more information on how you can cover and protect your practice. We want you to focus on what matters. appropriations bills weren’t passed until after Easter and the government operated on “temporary” continuing resolutions for months. Congress paused its squabbles with President John Tyler to fix this problem and Tyler, surprisingly, didn’t veto it. The new fiscal year beginning on July 1 resolved that issue for more than a century until the air-conditioned, jet-flying members of the 93rd Congress passed the Congres- sional Budget Act of 1974. One provision of the law changed the federal fiscal year to start on October 1. Theoretically, failing to pass an appropriation bill by that date means a government shutdown, but Congress would never let that happen, or at least never let it happen a dozen times since 1974. Maybe 11, but never 12. Contract Years Among the terms that lawyers need to watch for ambiguity is the contract year. Drafters who define it simply as a year can run into complications over what the specific an- niversary date is when the effective date isn’t clear. If the year is carefully set out—“the period from 12:00:01 a.m., Eastern Time, January 1, 2026, to 12:00 midnight, Eastern Time, December 31, 2026 (the “Contract Year”)”—it will solve most problems, but life and ambiguity always finds a way. When un- certainty arises, sometimes the principles of statutory construction laid out in Sutherland can be applied, but a drafting guide like Lenne Espenschied’s Contract Drafting: Powerful Prose in Transactional Practice, 3d (ABA 2019) can also be useful. Court Years The year of the United States Supreme Court famously (and infamously) begins on the first Monday of October. I say “infamously” because “First Monday” was the name of a hilariously awful TV drama about the Su- preme Court that CBS aired briefly in 2002 before pulling the plug. This utterly clueless show had a painfully bad scene where a justice played by an overacting Charles Durning in a Foghorn Leghorn accent ignored the lawyers and decided to probingly interrogate a party about the facts of the case. Another scene— my favorite—had two law clerks researching a case by randomly pulling law books off the shelves. No digests, Westlaw or Lexis needed. (Continued from previous page) derbycitylitho.com • duplicatorsales.net 1-800-633-8921 • 831 E. Broadway, Louisville, KY 40204 PRINT, CONNECT, SUCCEED Tailoring your Office Technology Solutions since 1959. Network Printers and Copiers Fleet and Managed Print Solutions Corporate Mailing Systems Computer Systems and Managed IT Document Management Professional Print Most U.S. courts are in continuous session and don’t have year beginnings, but the U.S. Supreme Court, which first sat in 1790, re- tains the rhythm and pace of a “term of court commencing on the first Monday in October of each year,” as codified by 28 U.S. Code § 2. The date resembles the start of the British legal year, which begins its Michaelmas term on September 29, St. Michaels Day. And, indeed, a search of statutes of the colonial Virginia, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maryland indicates that pre-revolutionary America was aligned with the four English terms of Michaelmas, Hilary (January), Eas- ter (March) and Trinity (June). However, that is likely a coincidence. The Fed- eral Judiciary Act of 1789, which established the U.S. court system, created two Supreme Court terms, one held in February and one in August. Congress in its 1802 Judiciary Act cut it to a term that began on the first Monday of February, which was fortunate as the Court had moved from Philadelphia to the new District of Columbia. See, supra, “blazing hot D.C. summers.” It was not until a 1873 law reorganizing the federal circuit courts and adding a seventh Supreme Court justice that Congress moved the start of the U.S. Supreme Court to Octo- ber (the second Monday), and then in 1949 that the date was set as the first Monday of October. If the members of Congress were influenced by the English judicial calendar, it was because they read references to it in Charles Dicken’s novel Bleak House. Happy New Years! So Happy New Year—by Gregorian, Jew- ish, Islamic, Chinese or other calendars. May your fiscal years—Kentucky and fed- eral—balance. And may this year’s Supreme Court term begin in October without any further attempt by network programmers to dramatize it. Kurt X. Metzmeier is the interim director of the law library and professor of legal bibliography at the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law, but he does not purport to represent the university or the law school. He is the author of Writing the Legal Record: Law Report- ers in Nineteenth Century Kentucky and coauthor of Legal Research in a Nutshell, 15th ed. n
