REJECTION OF TESTIMONIES (reprobatio attestationum). - It is a juridical institution which the CIC, deriving it from the ius vetus, regulates in cann. 1783 n. 2, 1784 and 1785, and which is also found in the more recent (6 Jan. 1950) motu proprio *Sollicitudinem nostram* for Eastern trials (can. 306-308).
In substance, once the testimonies have been made public, the parties have the right to reject them, that is, to challenge them by adducing arguments and documents and even by invoking other testimonies to demonstrate that one or more witnesses have given false evidence. The judge, unless he considers the rejection manifestly frivolous or inspired by improper motives, admits the request and proceeds to examine the matter in the usual form of incidental proceedings (can. 1837 et seq.), either in a formal and solemn manner to be decided by interlocutory judgment (generally after the formulation of doubts) or by simple decree (can. 1840). The outcome of the incidental proceedings will therefore be a judicial decision declaring either that the witness did not give false evidence or that he did and that his testimony cannot be taken into account. After this, the merits of the case resume and the proceedings continue.
It should be noted that rejection is a purely civil procedure; it does not involve a criminal proceeding for perjury against the witness, nor can it result in a criminal conviction of the witness himself, who, moreover, does not become a party to the incidental proceedings. It is not difficult to see how such a procedure, if it could be compatible with the long, cumbersome and costly forms of an archaic procedure, is entirely incompatible with the requirements of speed and celerity, and especially of procedural concentration, of a modern procedure. This fragmentation of the trial into incidental proceedings, in which the merits of the evidence are examined before the final decision, this anticipation—even if only partial (and perhaps precisely because it is partial)—of the evaluation of the probative material, is the very antithesis of the principles now accepted by procedural doctrine. Fortunately, in the practice of ecclesiastical tribunals, the rejection of testimonies (like the analogous institution of the rejection of the person of the witness) is an institution to which recourse is almost never had. Indeed, the instruction of 1 July 1932 of the Sacred Congregation of Sacraments for matrimonial trials, while expressly mentioning the *reprobatio personae testium* (art. 131), excludes the institution of the *reprobatio attestationum*. In practice, therefore, after the testimonies have been published, if a party or the defender of the bond or the promoter of justice considers that he can and should refute any testimony that, in his opinion, does not conform to the truth, he requests further evidence. The judge almost always grants this (unless he considers it irrelevant or already excluded by certain and incontestable elements) and collects the requested evidence. Then, in the discussion on the merits, the parties, debating the entire body of evidence, will explain the reasons why a witness should be considered truthful or false, and the judge, in the reasoning of his sentence, will state on what evidence he bases his decision, without the need for a formal declaration of rejection of the testimonies. In substance, practice has corrected the excessively formalistic precept of the written law. It is curious, however, that this corrected practice has not been taken into account in the recent formulation of Eastern law.