SIDE-BAR RULES

In English practice. There are some rules which the courts authorize their officers to grant as a matter of course without formal application being made to them in open court and these are technically termed “side-bar rules,” because formerly they were moved for by the attorneys at the side bar in court; such, for instance, was the rule to plead, which was an order or command of the court requiring a defendant to plead within a specified number of days. Such also were the rules to reply, to rejoin, and many others, the granting of which depended upon settled rules of practice rather than upon the discretion of the courts, all of which are rendered unnecessary by recent statutory changes. Brown, voc. “Rule.”