Definition
The fixed, recurring periods of the year during which a court is formally open and authorized to conduct judicial business. During a term of court, judges sit, cases are heard, juries are convened, judgments are entered, and other official proceedings take place. Between terms — in the intervening periods historically called vacations or recesses — courts were generally not authorized to act, and certain procedural steps could not be taken.
The concept carries two related but distinct applications:
1. The scheduled session itself: the formal sitting of a court during a designated period, defined by statute or court rule and typically identified by season (e.g., January Term, April Term) or by reference to a specific date on which the term opens.
2. The legal significance of timing: many procedural rights, deadlines, and jurisdictional questions were historically measured by reference to terms. Filing during a term, carrying a case over to a succeeding term, or allowing a term to pass without action each had specific procedural consequences under common law pleading.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Terms" in ordinary English refers to conditions of an agreement, or to a period of time defined by some authority (e.g., a school term, a presidential term).
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "A fixed period of time; a limited time... the time for which anything lasts; as, a school term."
The common meaning of "term" as a defined period of time is close enough that confusion is unlikely in isolation. The legal specificity, however, lies in what a term of court triggers procedurally: it is not merely a period of time but a jurisdictional and procedural unit that determined when courts could act, when parties had to act, and how rights lapsed. That functional weight is entirely absent from ordinary usage.
Common Confusion
Terms of court should not be confused with court sessions or court days. A term was the broader calendar unit — weeks or months — while a session was often the daily or weekly sitting within the term. In modern usage, "session" has largely displaced "term" in American courts, and the two words are frequently used interchangeably in informal legal writing. Researchers consulting nineteenth-century sources must be alert to the stricter historical meaning, where "term" carried jurisdictional significance that "session" did not.
The phrase "under terms" (also found in Bouvier's) is a separate usage entirely — referring to conditions imposed by a court as a price for discretionary relief — and should not be confused with terms of court as a scheduling concept.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is primarily a historical research tool. Understanding terms of court is essential for reading pre-twentieth-century American and English procedural sources accurately.
First, many procedural rules in common law pleading were term-dependent. The rule that a judgment not entered during the term in which it was rendered could require a new trial, or that a motion not made during the proper term was waived, appears throughout nineteenth-century American case law and treatises. Researchers reading older opinions without understanding term structure will misread the procedural history.
Second, statutes of limitations and filing deadlines in historical sources were sometimes expressed in terms of court rather than calendar days. A requirement that an action be commenced "within two terms" is meaningless without knowing the court's term calendar for the relevant jurisdiction and period.
Third, the shift from term-based to continuous or calendar-based court operations happened at different times in different American jurisdictions — broadly across the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries at the state level, and formalized federally by the adoption of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in 1938, which moved away from term-based practice. Researchers working across that transition period must distinguish which procedural regime applied.
Fourth, appeals and writs were historically term-sensitive. Writs of error and bills of exception had to be filed within specific terms, and the failure to act within the correct term could forfeit appellate rights entirely. This appears frequently in discussions of error coram nobis, supersedeas, and related remedies.
Corpus researchers should flag all procedural discussions in pre-1940 sources for term-based reasoning that may not be visible to a modern reader accustomed to continuous court calendars.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's and Burrill's are in full agreement on the core definition: terms of court are "those stated periods of the year, during which courts sit for the dispatch of business." Both sources reflect the standard English common law understanding, and both are drawing from Blackstone.
Burrill's adds the more historically rich account, attributing the origin of English court terms to canonical ecclesiastical constitutions rather than to the Conquest — crediting Blackstone's synthesis of Selden and Spelman. The English terms (Hilary, Easter, Trinity, and Michaelmas) were structured around church feast days and prohibited periods for canonical proceedings, meaning courts did not sit during seasons of religious observance. This origin explains the seemingly arbitrary calendar gaps between terms and is important context when reading English equity practice or citations to English authorities in early American cases.
What neither source addresses is the transitional American practice, where terms varied enormously by state and even by court within a state. Federal circuit and district courts historically held terms on fixed schedules set by Congress and later by local rules. State courts ranged from quarterly terms in rural jurisdictions to near-continuous urban dockets by the late nineteenth century. The historical dictionaries give the English framework cleanly but offer limited guidance on American jurisdictional variation — a gap researchers must fill from state-specific sources.
Jurisdictional Note
English courts operated under four named terms (Hilary, Easter, Trinity, Michaelmas) until the Judicature Acts of 1873–1875 abolished them in favor of continuous sittings. American jurisdictions followed varying schedules set by state statute or local rule. Federal court terms were governed by congressional act and later by local district rules, with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (1938) effectively ending the procedural significance of terms in federal practice.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Tax Court Appeals to Circuit Courts (The Law Mind Tax Encyclopedia) — relevant for researchers tracing the procedural timeline of Tax Court proceedings, where term and session concepts retain some relevance to filing deadlines and appellate timing.