Definition
A post-verdict motion or court action that stops a judgment from being entered or takes effect, on the ground that a fatal defect appears on the face of the record itself. The court, upon granting such a motion, refuses to give judgment notwithstanding the verdict — not because the verdict was wrong, but because the proceeding, as reflected in the record, was legally insufficient to support any valid judgment.
The doctrine applies in both civil and criminal proceedings, though its practical importance has always been greater on the criminal side:
1. Civil arrest of judgment: After a jury verdict for the plaintiff, the defendant moves to arrest judgment on the ground that the declaration (complaint) fails to state a legally sufficient cause of action, or that the verdict is materially at variance with the pleadings. The defect must be one visible on the record — not an evidentiary failure at trial.
2. Criminal arrest of judgment: After conviction, the defendant moves the court to withhold sentencing on the ground that the indictment is fatally defective — for example, that it fails to allege an essential element of the offense, contains a material misstatement, or is so uncertain that no valid judgment could rest upon it. The motion must be made between verdict and sentence.
In both contexts, the essential rule is the same: the defect must be intrinsic to the record. Errors in evidence, procedural irregularities at trial, and matters outside the written record cannot support the motion.
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Common Confusion
Arrest of judgment is easily confused with motion for new trial and with motion in arrest — and in modern practice, with the contemporaneous device of a motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict (JNOV) or a Rule 50 motion. The distinctions matter for research:
A motion for new trial challenges the result of the proceeding on grounds such as insufficient evidence or juror misconduct — matters that may involve facts outside the record. Arrest of judgment is strictly limited to record defects. A new trial sends the case back for another attempt; arrest of judgment withholds entry of judgment entirely on the existing proceeding.
In criminal cases, arrest of judgment should also be distinguished from a motion to dismiss the indictment (which comes before trial) and from a direct appeal (which comes after judgment is entered). Arrest of judgment occupies the specific window between verdict and sentencing.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term has a narrow modern footprint but a large historical one, and researchers risk systematically underestimating its significance in pre-twentieth-century sources.
In early American and English practice, arrest of judgment was the primary post-verdict remedy for defects in criminal indictments. Before modern pleading reforms and harmless-error doctrines, a fatally defective indictment could not be cured by the verdict — the judgment had to be arrested. Many nineteenth-century appellate decisions that look like appeals on the merits are actually reviews of denied motions in arrest, and the procedural posture changes what law governs.
The doctrine's civil-side importance declined sharply with the adoption of code pleading in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the later Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which substantially loosened pleading requirements and introduced more flexible post-trial motions. On the criminal side, the motion survived longer and appears in some state codes today, though it has been largely absorbed into post-conviction motion practice and direct appeal.
Two research traps: First, when reading historical opinions, look carefully at whether a court is discussing arrest of judgment as the motion below — this affects what issues were preserved for review. Second, the phrase "motion in arrest of judgment" appears in older sources interchangeably with "arrest of judgment"; both refer to the same procedural device.
Because the remedy depends entirely on what appears on the face of the record, corpus researchers working with indictment forms, declaration precedents, and pleading manuals will find arrest of judgment a useful diagnostic — the cases that succeed reveal what contemporaneous courts regarded as fatally insufficient.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries agree on the core definition. Black's and Burrill track closely, both defining the motion as staying or refusing judgment after verdict for a matter intrinsic to the face of the record, and both specify that the defect must be one that would render the judgment erroneous or reversible if entered. Burrill adds useful illustrations: a verdict that differs materially from the pleadings, or a declaration insufficient in law, are the paradigm cases.
Bouvier's is largely consistent but shifts emphasis toward the plaintiff's entitlement framing — the court refuses judgment because the record shows the plaintiff is not entitled to it — which captures the civil-side perspective more cleanly. Bouvier also makes explicit what the others imply: no defect in evidence or irregularity at trial can be urged at this stage. The Rapalje & Lawrence entry focuses almost entirely on the criminal application, noting that the motion lies when there is a material misstatement or uncertainty in the indictment not aided (corrected) by the verdict.
None of the historical sources addresses the decline of the doctrine or its relationship to modern post-trial motion practice — a gap that is significant for researchers working across the 1850–1950 period, when civil arrest of judgment was quietly displaced by code and rules-based practice while criminal arrest of judgment remained viable in many jurisdictions.
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Jurisdictional Note
A number of states retain arrest of judgment by statute or court rule, particularly in criminal proceedings. Federal criminal practice under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure has historically recognized the motion (see Fed. R. Crim. P. 34 in its current form), with a strict time limit and an equally strict limitation to facial record defects. Civil arrest of judgment has no direct counterpart in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure; researchers encountering the term in federal civil cases are almost certainly reading pre-Rules decisions.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Enforcement of Judgments — Execution, Domestication, and Post-Judgment Discovery (The Law Mind Remedies & Equity Encyclopedia)
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