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CHAPTER XI.: SIXTH DEVICE—MOTION BUSINESS. - Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 7 (Rationale of Judicial Evidence Part 2) [1843]

Edition used:

The Works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the Superintendence of his Executor, John Bowring (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838-1843). 11 vols. Vol. 7.

Part of: The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 11 vols.

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CHAPTER XI.

SIXTH DEVICE—MOTION BUSINESS.

The principal agent in motion business is the advocate. Except the principal hearing (called in jury causes the trial,) almost all business in which the advocate (as such) has, or is pretended to have had, occasion to address himself in open court to the judge, is referable to this head: it consists in making a motion, or opposing it.

In the aggregate mass of motions, two main branches may be distinguished: motions not of course, and motions of course.* The use of the distinction will appear presently.

The mass of business composed of motions not of course, calls upon us to distinguish it into two branches:—1. Incidental motions; being so many applications made to the judge, in the course of a suit already instituted in some other form. 2. Original or originative motions; giving birth each of them to an individual suit, belonging to that class of suits which on this account may be ternted motion-suits or causes.

All motions not of course have two common properties or characteristic differences, by which they are distinguished from motions of course:—1. Each of them has for its ground and support a mass of evidence; 2. That mass, the whole of it, is of a sort which not only is, but, by all those by whom on a disputed case it is thus employed, is perfectly known, and, upon occasion, openly acknowledged, to be of an inferior and untrustworthy complexion: so untrustworthy, that, when better is to be had without preponderant delay, vexation, and expense (and it is seldom indeed in which it is not to be had even with less delay, vexation, and expense,) it is altogether unfit to be, on any disputed occasion, ever received in any court of justice.

Motion causes, in so far as they extend, are a sort of improvement upon ordinary causes: they are tried in a bad mode, but in a mode somewhat less dilatory: perjury abounds and triumphs; but one way or other the business terminates. As men are dealt with in those courts, he who is soonest out of them is best served. All the rules of evidence are either discarded or reversed. No unwilling witness is compellable; every willing witness is received. Every party is admitted to swear for himself; no party is compelled to swear against himself. Testimony, which would not be received on any other occasion—the testimony of a convicted perjurer—is received on this occasion without difficulty. Every man that chooses to be heard is heard, on condition that his testimony be concerted with an attorney, and that he be not cross-examined.

Incidental motions arise most of them out of factitious business, the business made at the offices. With the help of so many devices, all directed to this end,—exclusion of the parties, mechanical judicature, jargon, fiction, mendacity-licence, nullification,—blunders are made, or pretended to have been made, that application may be made for setting them to rights: these applications are called motions; the incidental motions.

Under any natural system, accidents may arise, producing need of new arrangements, and of application for that purpose to the judge: unexpected absence, sickness, lunacy, death, and so forth. On an occasion of this sort, what truth and justice require is, some person from whose testimony (when present and examined) the judge can deduce sufficient ground for being satisfied about the matter of fact. Instead of that, he sees a lawyer, who, knowing nothing about the matter, stands with a paper in his hand, containing a vamped-up story, which, whether in his own eyes it be true or false, he calls upon the judge to take for true.

Motions of course, are motions that are of no use. Without any one exception, this character belongs to every individual operation of the class thus denominated. Of no use, none whatever: understand always with reference to the interest of the suitor, to the ends of justice. To the ends of judicature, to the partnership in divers of its branches,—yes, of no small use.

A motion of course, is an application supposed to be made to the judge, but which, made or not made, never is refused—never creates on the part of the judge any demand for the exercise of reason—never, in fact, comes under his cognizance.

Motions of course, are again distinguishable into two other classes—1. Motions made; 2. Motions not made.

This distinction is of comparatively recent growth. Originally, all motions used to be made: all are still supposed to be made.

Every motion of course, that has been made, is signed by the advocate, in attestation of his having made it; in attestation of his having received the fee charged by the attorney to the client.

Every motion that has not been made, but is charged to the client as having been made, is also signed by the advocate; viz. in attestation of his having made it, as well as of his having received his fee for it.

Made or not made, they are all alike useless: mere pretences, false pretences, for extracting money out of the pocket of the distressed suitor, to put it into the pockets of the attorney, the barrister—the judge’s protegé, and eventually the judge. Pretence of speaking, is false in many of them; pretence of thinking, is false in all of them.

In conclusion, we have a division of the whole stock of motions: applications that ought not to be made in that manner, and applications that ought not to be made at all: the division is exhaustive.

[* ]Of late years this class of motions has been very considerably reduced by rules of court issued by the judges.—Ed.