Exceptions
Historically, at trial, an attorney had to promptly take an exception (by saying "I except" followed by a reason) immediately after an objection was overruled in order to preserve it for appeal, or else the objection was permanently waived. In addition, at the end of the trial, the attorney had to submit a written "bill of exceptions" listing all the exceptions which he intended to appeal upon, which the judge then signed and sealed, making it part of the trial record. Eventually most lawyers and judges came to recognize that exceptions were a waste of time because the objection itself and the context of the surrounding record are all the appellate court really needs to resolve the point in dispute. Starting in the 1930s, exceptions were abolished in the federal courts and in many state courts as well. For example, California did not technically abolish exceptions, but merely rendered them superfluous by simply treating just about every ruling of the trial court as automatically excepted to. Thus, in nearly all U.S. courts, it is now sufficient that the objection was clearly made on the record.
Read more about this topic: Objection (law)
Famous quotes containing the word exceptions:
“... people were so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fools’ caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else’s were transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp they alone were rosy.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“For true poetry, complete poetry, consists in the harmony of contraries. Hence, it is time to say aloud—and it is here above all that exceptions prove the rule—that everything that exists in nature exists in art.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)