Chapter V: Of Persons To Be Admitted to Judicial Discussion and of the Manner of Making and Preserving Acts

§ 1. While causes are conducted before the tribunal, strangers are to be kept from the hall, and only those persons are to be present whom the judge has judged necessary for expediting the process.

§ 2. All those assisting at the trial who gravely fail in the reverence and obedience owed to the tribunal can be recalled to duty by the judge, even immediately and on the spot if someone sins in this while the tribunal is sitting, also by censures or other suitable penalties; advocates and procurators, moreover, can also be deprived of the right of treating other causes before ecclesiastical tribunals.

If a person ignorant of the language of the place intervenes in some procedural act and the judges and parties do not understand the proper language of this person, a sworn interpreter is to be employed, designated by the judge, against whom neither party has proposed a legitimate exception.

§ 1. Judicial acts, both those which regard the merit of the question, or acts of the cause, for example sentences and proofs of every kind, and those which pertain to the form of proceeding, or acts of the process, for example citations, intimations, etc., must be reduced to writing.

§ 2. Unless a just cause persuades otherwise, insofar as this can be done, they are to be written in the Latin language; but the interrogations and responses of witnesses, and other similar things, must be made in the vernacular language.

§ 1. The individual sheets of the process are to be numbered; and the signature of the actuary with the seal of the tribunal is to be placed on each sheet.

§ 2. When individual acts have been completed or interrupted or remitted to another session, the signature of the actuary and of the judge or president of the tribunal is to be placed.

§ 3. Whenever in judicial acts the signature of parties or witnesses is required, if the party or witness cannot or will not make it, this is to be noted in the acts themselves, and at the same time the judge and actuary are to attest that the act itself was read word for word to the party or witness, and that the party or witness either could not or would not sign.

§ 1. In case of appeal, copies of the acts, written according to the norm of can. 1642, 1643 and bound into a fascicle, with an index of all acts and documents and with the attestation of the actuary or chancellor concerning their faithful transcription and integrity, are to be sent to the higher tribunal; if copies cannot be transcribed without grave inconvenience, the original acts themselves are to be sent with opportune precautions.

§ 2. If they must be sent to a place where the vernacular language is not known, the acts themselves are to be translated into the Latin language, precautions being employed so that the faithful translation is established.

§ 3. If the acts have not been made in the required form and script, they can be rejected by the higher judge; in which case those to whom fault is imputable are bound to make and send the acts again at their own expense.

§ 1. When the judgment has been completed, documents must be restored to the parties, unless in criminal matters, with the public good so requiring, the judge has judged that something must be retained.

§ 2. All documents which remain with the tribunal are to be deposited in the archive of the Curia, whether public or secret, according as their nature requires.

§ 3. Notaries, actuaries, and the chancellor are prohibited from handing over a copy of judicial acts and documents which have been acquired for the process without a mandate of the judge.

§ 4. Anonymous letters which contribute nothing to the merit of the cause, and also signed letters which are certainly calumnious, are to be destroyed.