Star Chamber (1 gen 1487 anni – 1 gen 1641 anni)

Descrizione:

- At this time, England had a 2-tier legal system: the common law, and a system under the Royal prerogative, which allowed torture and enabled the king to do as he saw fit. Its court was held in the Start Chamber (today a by-word for injustice and oppression, but in the beginning it was the opposite).

The Star Chamber (Latin: Camera stellata) was an English court of law which sat at the royal Palace of Westminster, from the late 15th century to the mid-17th century (c. 1641), and was composed of Privy Councillors and common-law judges, to supplement the judicial activities of the common-law and equity courts in civil and criminal matters. The Star Chamber was originally established to ensure the fair enforcement of laws against socially and politically prominent people so powerful that ordinary courts would probably hesitate to convict them of their crimes. However, it became synonymous with social and political oppression through the arbitrary use and abuse of the power it wielded.

In modern usage, legal or administrative bodies with strict, arbitrary rulings and secretive proceedings are sometimes called, metaphorically or poetically, "star chambers." This is a pejorative term and intended to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the proceedings. "Star Chamber" can also, rarely, be used in its original meaning, for instance when a politician uses parliamentary privilege to examine and then exculpate or condemn a powerful organisation or person. Due to the constitutional separation of powers and the ceasing of the Star Chamber, the main powers of select committees are to enhance the public debate — politicians are deemed to no longer wield powers in the criminal law, which belongs to the courts.[a]

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