Bench

[L. Lat. bancus; L. Fr. banke, Aon^iie.] A seat of judgment^ or tribunal for the administration of justice; the seat occupied by judges in courts. The judges themselves, as occupying the judgment seat in courts. The term is figuratively used in this sense as a professional title, just as the bar is employed to denote the legal profession. The ancient and original name of the English Court of Common Pleas, or Common Bench, as it is sometimes called. "Attaint was brought in the Bench." Dyer, 63 b. See Bancus, The practice of appropriating an elevated and separate seat for the use of judges, seems to have been a common one from the earliest times. When the Roman praetor heard causes, he sat in the forum or comitium on a tribunal, {in, or pro tribunali,) ' which was a kind of stage or scaffold (suggestum,) made of wood, and moveable.

Cic. in Fat. 14. Suet. Cces. 84.

In matters of less importance, he judged and passed sentence without form, at any time, and in any place, whether sitting or walking; and then he was said cognoscere e, vel de piano; to hear causes from, or on a level with his suitors, (ex cequo loco, et non e tribunali, aut ex superiori loco. ) Cic. Fam. iii.

8. Cmin. 17. Suet. Tib. 33.

The inferior magistrates when they sat in judgment did not use a tribunal, but occupied subsellia, or lower seats.

Ascon. in Cic. Suet, Claud. 23.

Hence they were sometimes called judices pedanei, either a pedibus, from the feet, (as the praetor sometimes heard causes while standing, or on foot; supra,) or because they administered justice pede piano, with their feet on a level with those of the suitors. Calvin Lex. Jurid, voc.

Pedanei.

Among the ancient Britons, justice was administered from seats or tribunals constructed of mounds or banks of turf, {e tribunalibus aggesto ccspite constructis.) Spelman, The right of occupying a bench or tribunal (termed the jus band, or right of benchf) was from, an early period considered to be a peculiar privilege of the king's courts in England; the judges of infenor courts, such as hundred courts, and courts baron, being supposed to administer justice without such a formality. See High justice. These last are compared by Spelman to the judices pedanei of the Roman law supra) from which source the idea of the S listinctive privilege of a bench was most probably borrowed. Such inferior judges were called in France juges dessous Vorme (judges under the elm,) because they used to sit under an elm or other tree, near the lord's house. Spelman, voc.

Bancus

And in much later times, in England, the hundred court at Freibridge, in Norfolk, was held under an oak at Gey wood; and the court for the hundred of Woolsey, in Herefordshire, was held under an oak near Ashton/ which was called "the hundred oak." Id. ibid, Blount, voc.

Bank.