Chamber

Chamber (pronounced cheym-ber)

(1) A room, usually private, in a house or apartment, especially a bedroom (now archaic or poetic).

(2) A reception room or audience room in an official residence, palace, etc.

(3) The meeting hall of a legislative or other assembly.

(4) In law, a place where a judge hears matters not requiring action in open court.

(5) In England, the quarters or rooms that lawyers use to consult with their clients, especially in the Inns of Court.

(6) A legislative, judicial, or other like body.

(7) An organization of individuals or companies for a specified purpose.

(8) The place where the moneys due a government are received and kept; a treasury or chamberlain's office (obsolete).

(9) Of or relating to, or performing chamber music.

(10) To put or enclose in, or as in, a chamber.

(11) To provide with a chamber.

(12) The space between two gates of the locks of a canal, dry dock, etc

(13) An enclosure for a cartridge in the cylinder of a revolver or for a shell in the breech of a cannon

(14) An enclosed space, compartment or cavity; the smallest chamber in a cave.

1175-1225: From the Middle English chamber (a room in a (usually private) house) from the eleventh century Old French chambre (room, chamber, apartment), derived from the Late Latin camera (a chamber, room), variant of camara (vaulted room) from the Ancient Greek kamára.  In an interesting linguistic twist, the Old French and Middle English words were also used alone and in combinations to form words for "latrine, privy" from the idea of the "bedroom utensil for containing urine".  The word in the fourteenth century was adopted for use in to anatomy in the sense of "an enclosed space in a body" and this was extended to machinery after 1769, the use in gunnery or ballistics meaning  "part of the bore in which the charge is placed" dating from the 1620s.  The familiar use to refer to the rooms where legislative bodies assemble (ie upper & lower chambers) has been in use since circa 1400.  Chamber music dates from 1789; the distinction being it described a type of music meant to be performed in private rooms instead of public halls.  Chamber-lye, disturbingly to modern ears, meant "urine used as a detergent" and dates from the 1570s and the obviously related chamber-pot (also chamberpot) (vessel for urine used in bedrooms) came into use a decade earlier.  A chambermaid was (1) a female servant who dresses a lady and waits on her in her bedchamber and (2) a woman who makes beds and cleans rooms in a private house, palace or inn, a form which emerged in the 1580s and obviously derived from bedchamber (also bed-chamber) (a room for sleep or repose) which had been in use since the mid-fourteenth century.  Bedchamber is now archaic and used only in relation to royalty (an then mostly in historic reference), expensive hotels and hopeful real-estate salespeople.  The verb chamber was in the late fourteenth century derived from the noun and was used in the sense of (1) to restrain, shut up as in a chamber and (2) to furnish with a chamber" (implied in chambered); the related form was chambering.  The adjective chambered (divided into chambers) was from the same era and was the past-participle adjective the verb.  The famous reference to nautilus shells dates from 1819.

The Court of Star Chamber

Named for the star pattern on the ceiling of the room in Westminster Palace where sittings were convened, the Court of Star Chamber (known almost always as the Star Chamber), was an English law court which operated in parallel with the common-law courts.  The Star Chamber drew its authority from the king's sovereign power and privileges and was not bound by the common law.

The former Court of Star Chamber (1836), drawing by unknown artist.

The Court of Star Chamber was created originally to ensure the enforcement of laws against the socially and politically well-connected, those whom ordinary courts may hesitate to convict and technically, it evolved from the medieval King's Council.  There had been a tradition of the king presiding over a court composed of his Privy Counsellors and in 1487, under the supervision of Henry VII (1457–1509; King of England 1485-1509 and the first Tudor king), the Court of Star Chamber was established as a judicial body separate from the King's Council.  The original rationale was for the Star Chamber to (1) oversee the lower courts, (2) to act as a court of appeal and (3) to hear petitions addressed to the king seeking redress.  Initially the court heard cases only on appeal, but Henry VIII's (1491–1547; King of England 1509-1547) chancellor, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (1473–1530; Lord High Chancellor of England 1515-1529) encouraged suitors directly to lodge writs of appeal and not await verdicts from the common-law courts.  Although most of the cases heard involved property rights, trade, government administration and public corruption, the Tudors especially were concerned with public disorder and Cardinal Wolsey referred matters involving forgery, fraud, perjury, riot, slander, and anything else he considered a breach of the peace. Following the Reformation, the Star Chamber was used (and much misused) to punish religious dissenters.

Procedurally the Star Chamber would begin a case with a petition or with information brought to the attention of the judges and depositions would be taken to discover the facts.  Accused parties could be put on oath to respond to the charges and answer detailed questions. No juries were used; members of the court decided whether to hear cases, passed verdicts and assigned punishments.  Structurally, court was thus a hybrid with influences from the common law, Roman civil law, developments in Chancery (equity) law and even the later Court of Exchequer.  Interestingly, the court did not have capital jurisdiction so instead declared its choice of punishment was wholly arbitrary and not at all governed by precedent, guidelines or laws. Judges could choose (indeed even invent) the punishment they felt was most appropriate to the crime or criminal. The punishments included fines, time in the pillory (or stocks), whipping, branding, mutilation or imprisonment for any length of time.  There are critics of the NSW ICAC who compare its operations with the Star Chamber; in this they’re only partially correct and certainly not in relation to punishments. 

Tucked up: Lindsay Lohan in her bedchamber.

The Star Chamber offered an expeditious resolution to legal conflicts. It was popular with the Tudors because it could quickly enforce the law when other courts were slow or tainted by corruption and because it could offer satisfactory remedies when the common law restricted punishment or failed to address specific infractions. Under the Tudors, Star Chamber hearings were held in public, so proceedings and verdicts were subject to inspection which led most judges to act with reason and try to deliver fair justice.  In the seventeenth century, the court evolved into something secretive and corrupt. The Stuarts used the court to enforce their royal proclamations, holding sessions in secret and allowing no appeal.  Charles I (1600–1649; King of England, Scotland, and Ireland 1625-1649) saw the court as a substitute for Parliament when he tried to govern without calling the legislature into session and resentment grew as the Stuarts used the court to prosecute members of the nobility who would otherwise not be subject to prosecution in common-law courts.  The Long Parliament abolished the Star Chamber in 1641.   

Except for historic reference, the term "star chamber" is now almost always pejorative and used to describe social and political oppression through the arbitrary use and abuse of the powers wielded.  In political science, the doctrine of separation of powers is held to be the most effective means to prevent abuse of power by the state.  At its most simple, it means politicians can no longer in individual cases impose the sanctions of criminal law, a function which belongs exclusively to the courts.