Definition
A procedural privilege in English practice by which a party who had argued a special case was entitled to make a motion on a day that was not an ordinary motion day. In other words, having argued a special case conferred a right to move the court outside the regular schedule for hearing motions. The practice was associated with the Court of Exchequer and had already fallen into disuse in the Queen's Bench by the time it was recorded in the historical dictionaries.
Common Confusion
The phrase "moving for an argument" can read in modern English as a request to have a matter argued — that is, seeking oral argument on a pending motion. That is not what the term means. It describes the reverse sequence: the privilege to make a motion flows from having already argued a special case. The act of arguing came first; the entitlement to move on a non-motion day followed. Researchers encountering this phrase in historical English court records should not read it as a motion seeking argument.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is essentially a relic of English Exchequer procedure and has no direct equivalent in modern American or contemporary English practice. Researchers will encounter it only in historical sources — primarily treatises and practice guides from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and in records of the Court of Exchequer.
Two traps for the unwary: First, the phrase sounds intuitive to a modern reader and will almost certainly be misread without this entry. Second, the Rapalje & Lawrence entry appends an entirely separate term — MULLONES FENI — immediately after the definition with no break, which could mislead a researcher skimming that source into thinking the two entries are related. They are not.
The term has no jurisdictional life in American courts. American practice never imported motion-day privileges of this specific character, and the structural distinction between "motion days" and other court days largely dissolved as docketing systems modernized. Any researcher tracing the history of motion practice in English common law courts should treat this as a narrow procedural artifact of Exchequer practice rather than a general common law principle.
The corpus connection most likely to lead researchers here is historical English civil procedure, the distinction between the Queen's Bench and the Exchequer, and the evolution of motion practice from fixed schedule days toward the more flexible docketing systems that followed.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both Black's (2nd Ed.) and Rapalje & Lawrence carry identical substantive definitions, both attributed to Wharton. Neither source elaborates on the mechanics of what constituted a "special case" for purposes of triggering the privilege, nor do they explain when or why the practice became obsolete in the Queen's Bench before persisting in the Exchequer. The historical record is thin. The Wharton attribution in both dictionaries suggests the definition was carried forward without independent verification — a common pattern in nineteenth-century legal lexicography where compilers drew from the same upstream sources. Researchers should not assume the two dictionary entries represent independent corroboration; they almost certainly share a single origin.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: the procedural rules governing what qualified as a "special case," whether the privilege was personal to counsel or attached to the party, and the precise timeline of obsolescence in the Queen's Bench. These questions would require direct examination of Exchequer records and period practice manuals.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is specific to English court practice, and within England, it was confined to the Court of Exchequer in its operative phase. It has no recognized equivalent in American federal or state procedure. Researchers working in comparative or historical common law contexts should treat it accordingly.