Bench (pronounced bench)
(1) A long seat (without arm or back-rest) for two or
more people:
(2) A seat occupied by an official, especially a judge in
a courtroom.
(3) Such a seat as a symbol of the office of an
individual judge or the judiciary.
(4) The office or dignity of various other officials, or
the officials themselves.
(5) In certain team sports, the seat (literally or
figuratively) on which the reserve (substitute) players sit during a game while
not playing and on which “starting side” players sit while substituted.
(6) The quality and number of the players named as substitutes.
(7) By extension, the quality and number of professionals
or experts in reserve, to be called upon as needed:
(8) As a clipping of workbench, the worktable of those
engaged in trades.
(9) In interior design, certain fixed flat surfaces
(kitchen bench, bathroom bench etc).
(10) A platform on which animals or objects are placed
for exhibition.
(11) In farming, a hollow on a hillside formed by sheep.
(12) In surveying, a bracket used to mount land surveying
equipment onto a stone or a wall.
(13) In
certain legislatures, as “front bench” (the office-holding members of a
government or opposition who sit on the bench at the front of their side of the
assembly), “back bench” (those elected members not appointed to an office who
sit on benches behind) and “cross-bench” (those not members of the party in
government or formal opposition who sit on other benches). The terms are sometimes literal but depending
on an assembly’s architecture or the size of a government’s majority, others
can sometimes “overflow” to the physical “cross benches”. Thus there are “front benchers”, “back
benchers” & “cross benchers” (sometimes hyphenated).
(14) In geography, a shelf-like area of rock with steep
slopes above and below, especially one marking a former shoreline.
(15) In extractive mining, a step or working elevation in
a mine.
(16) In science (usually as “at the bench”), to
distinguish between being engaged actively in research and concurrent or subsequent
administrative functions.
(17) To furnish with benches (now rare).
(18) To seat on a bench or on the bench (now rare).
(19) In extractive mining, to cut away the working faces
of benches.
(20) In certain team sports, to substitute or remove a
player from a game or relegate them to the reserve squad.
Pre 1000: From the Middle English bench, benk & bynk,
from the Old English benc (bench;
long seat (especially if backless)), from then Proto-West Germanic banki, from the Proto-Germanic bankon & bankiz (bench), from the primitive Indo-European bheg.
It was cognate with the Scots benk
& bink, the West Frisian bank, the Dutch bank, the Old High German Bank,
the Old Norse bekkr, the Old Frisian benk, the Danish bænk, the Swedish bänk and
the Icelandic bekkur, all from a
Germanic source and all of which meant “bench”.
In the Old English there were the verbs bencian (to make benches) and bencsittend
(one who sits on a bench). The dialectal
spellings benk & bink are both long obsolete. Bench & benching are nouns & verbs,
bencher is a noun, benched is a verb & adjective and benchy & benchlike
are adjectives; the noun plural is benches.
The source of the idea of the “bench as a type of long
seat” is thought to come from a riparian imagery (natural earthen incline
beside a body of water) and etymologists speculate the original notion was of a
“man-made earthwork used as a seat”.
Bench was from the late fourteenth century used of the tables on which
merchants displayed their wares and that may have been a borrowing from the
reference to the seat the judge would occupy in a court of law, that use
emerging early in the 1300s and coming soon to mean “judges collectively,
office of a judge, the judiciary”. Whether
it was actually an allusion to customers “judging the goods displayed” is
speculative. The use in team sports of
“the bench” being the “reserve or substitute team members” was drawn from the
actual physical bench on the sideline on which those players would sit while
not on the field. The earliest known
reference to the existence of furniture used for this purpose is from the US in
1899 but extending this generally to the “reserve of players” in baseball,
football etc seems not to have begun until 1909. In sport, the idiomatic forms include “bench
player” (one habitually selected only in the reserves and not the “starting
side”), “benched” (a player substituted during play and “sent to the bench”,
either because of poor performance or as part of a planned rotation, “injury
bench” (players substituted due to injury), “bench warmer (or “bench sitter”,
or “bench jockey”) (one whose career has plateaued as a “bench player”,
“warming the bench”)
Bench has attracted many modifiers describing use
including “bench grinder”, “bench saw”, “bench drill”, “sawbench”, “kitchen
bench”, “deacon's bench”, “friendship bench”, “bench easel”, “mourners' bench”,
“piano bench” (a “piano stool” for two), “preacher’s bench” et al. The noun & verb “benchmark” refers to the
optimal results obtained when testing something or someone on a “test bench”
although the use is often conceptual, a physical “test bench” not necessarily
part of the processes and even some structures in engineering referred to as a
“test bench” may bear no relationship to any actual “bench” however described.
Bench seats ranged from the austerely functional to the
luxurious: 1971 Holden HQ Belmont Station Sedan (station wagon or estate-car) (left) in turquoise vinyl and 1974 Imperial LeBaron four-door hardtop (right) in chestnut tufted leather though not actually “fine Corinthian leather” which was (mostly) exclusive to the Cordoba (1975-1983) until late 1975 when not only did the Imperial's brochures mention "genuine Corinthian leather (available at extra cost)" but for the first time since 1954 the range was referred to as the "Chrysler Imperial", a harbinger the brand was about to be retired. Imperial's advertising copy noted of the brochure photograph above: “...while the passenger restraint system with starter interlock is not shown, it is standard on all Imperials.”; the marketing types didn't like seat-belts messing up their photos. While all of the big three (GM, Ford & Chrysler) had tufted interiors in some lines, it was Chrysler which displayed the most commitment to the extravagance.
Rear bench
seat in 1963 Chrysler 300J.
The 1963 Chrysler 300J was the rarest (ie the one
which sold least) of the eleven “letter-series” cars (1955-1965) and whether or
not related to its performance in the market, one thing which at the time
attracted comment was a rear bench seat replacing the eye-catching twin buckets
and full length console which had for three seasons appeared in its
predecessors (300F, 300G & 300H). In
1963, the industry, chasing volume & profits, had begin the process of “de-contenting”
their cars, either ceasing the availability of stuff expensive to make or
install or moving such items to the option list; by the late 1960s even
Cadillac would be afflicted. The Chrysler
“letter series” 300s had begin in 1955 with what many had assumed was a one-off
high-performance model created by mixing & matching trim from the Imperial
line (newly that year established as a stand-alone marquee) as well as tuning
the mechanical components for speed.
Existing initially to homologate stuff for use in competition, not only
did the C-300 sell in a pleasing volume but it was such a success as a
image-building “halo car” the model was retained for 1956 and dubbed 300B with
a further nine annually following until the end of the line in with the 300L 1965,
each release appending as an identifier the next letter in the alphabet (thus
300C, 300D etc).
Much more
swish: Rear bucket seats in 1961 Chrysler 300G.
However, as well as the dubious
distinctions of being the least popular and being the only one the series
between 1957-1965 not to be offered as a convertible, the 300J represents a
quirk in the naming sequence, Chrysler skipping the letter “I”. That was done for the same reason there are so
few “I cup” bras, the rationale being “I” might be confused with the numeric
“1” so most manufacturers go straight from “H cup” to “J cup” although some
plug the gap with a “HH cup” and there are even those who stop at “G”, handing
incremental increases in volume with “GG” & “GGG” cups; it does seem an
industry crying out for an ISO. There’s
no evidence Chrysler ever pondered a “300HH”.
Like Chrysler and most bra manufacturers, the USAF (US Air Force) also
opted to skip “I” when allocating a designation for the updated version of the
Boeing B-52 Stratofortress (1952-1962 and still in service). Between the first test flight of the B-52A in
1954 and the B-52H entering service in 1962, the designations B-52B, B-52C,
B-52D, B-52E, B-52F & B-52G sequentially had been used but after flirting
with whether to use B52J as an interim designation (reflecting the installation
of enhanced electronic warfare systems) before finalizing the series as the
B-52K after new engines were fitted, in 2024 the USAF announced the new line
would be the B-52J and only a temporary internal code would distinguish those
not yet re-powered. Again, “I” was not
used so nobody would think there was a B521.
1958 Metropolitan Hardtop in two-tone Frost White and Berkshire Green over black and white houndstooth cloth and vinyl.
Under various marques, the Metropolitan was in production between 1953-1961 and its cartoon-like appearance was a result of applying the motifs of the standard-sized US automobile to something much smaller and in that it was conceptually similar in concept to the more severely executed Triumph Mayflower (1949-1953) which took as a model the “knife-edged” lines of the Daimlers and Rolls-Royces bodied by Hooper. Although most four-door cars with front bench seats featured full-width cushions (one which one’s butt sat) and squabs (on which one’s back rested), most two door models had “split squabs” which individually could be folded forward, affording someone access to the rear passenger compartment without disturbing anyone sitting on the other side of the front seat.
The split squabs erect (left), the passenger's folded forward to afford entry to the rear bench (centre) and the rear bench's squab laid flat to allow access to the truck or provide a larger storage space (right). In modern five-seaters, the trend has been the so-called 40/60 split seat which allows two passengers still to sit on the back seat while extending the trunk space into the cabin.
The Metropolitan also had a fold-down rear bench, a common feature in many station wagons, SUVs (sports utility vehicle) and such but for the diminutive Metropolitan it was essential because there was no trunk (boot) lid. Though not unique, that was unusual in four-seat sedans (which the Metropolitan sort of was) although some sports cars also lacked the fitting including the early Austin-Healey Sprite (the so-called bugeye or frogeye (depending on the side of the Atlantic where one sat)) and every Chevrolet Corvette between the release of the C2 in 1962 and the C5 in 1998.
Bench seat for four: the improbable 1948 Davis Divan. The blue car (one of a dozen survivors of the
17 built) was restored by the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles where it
is on display.
In cars and such, a “bench seat” differs from a “bucket”
or “individual” seat in that comfortably it can accommodate two or more
occupants, the comparison with furniture being the difference between a “chair”
and a “sofa”. In commercial vehicles,
bench seats commonly can seat four but in cars the recommended (and eventually
legal) limit was typically three although the truly bizarre Davis Divan (1948)
featured a bench allowing four abreast seating for four adults, something which
would have been an interesting experience for the quartet because a quirk of
the suspension system was the long, pointed nose of the thing actually rose
under braking. The three-wheeled Divan
was the brainchild of “automotive entrepreneur” (some historians are less kind)
Glen Gordon “Gary” Davis (1904-1973) who put some effort into building the
prototypes, not enough into preparation for actual production but much into
raising funds from “investors”, a goodly chunk of which apparently was spent on
real estate, entertaining and mink coats for “friends” (with all that implies).
He had a flair for slogans so many investors were attracted but the
project proved chimeric, Davis tried and convicted of fraud & grand theft,
spending two years in prison. The name
Divan was used as an allusion to the car's wide bench seat. It was from the French divan, from the Ottoman Turkish دیوان (divan), from
the Iranian Persian دیوان (divân), from the Classical Persian دیوان (dēwān), from
Middle Persian dpywʾn' or dywʾn' (dēwān)
(archive, collected writings, compilation of works”), from the Sumerian dub.
The sense was of a sofa-like piece of furniture comprising a mattress
lying against the wall and on either the floor or an elevated structure. Part of the tradition of interior decorating
in the Middle East, in the West divans are sometimes called “ottomans”; those
with an internal storage compartment: “box ottomans”.
Bench seat for four: A gang of four Sceggs. Sceggs should not be confused with the homophonic skegs, a feature from shipbuilding.
In courts of the common law traditions the terms “bench” &
“bar” date from the medieval age and remain part of courtroom terminology. “The bench” was originally the seat on which judges
at while presiding, the early furniture apparently a simple wooden bench as one
would find at many long dining tables and in the manner typical of the way
English evolves, “bench” came to be used of judges collectively and of the
institution of the judiciary itself. The
“bar” was the physical barrier separating the spectators and participants of a
trial from the area where the lawyers and judges conducted the proceedings,
thus the “bar table” being that at which the advocates sat and the right to
practice law before the bench being “passing the bar”, familiar in the modern
US phrase “passing the bar exam” or the English form “called to the bar”. As “bench” became a synecdoche for the
judiciary, “bar” came to be used of the lawyers although in jurisdictions where
there is a separation between those who appear in court (barristers) and those
who do not (solicitors) “bar” was applied only to the former and even after
reforms in some abolished the distinctions between certain branches of the law,
specialist practitioners continue often to be referred to as the “equity bar”
& “common law bar”. There’s thus the
apparent anomaly of the use of “bencher” (recorded in the 1580s) being used to
mean “senior member of an inn of court”, all of whom would have been members of
“the bar”. Presumably the idea was one
of “approaching the bench” or (more mischievously) “aspiring to the bench”. The bench-warrant (one issued by a judge, as
opposed to one issued by a magistrate or justice of the peace (JP) dates from
the 1690s.
An illuminated manuscript (circa 1460) which is the earliest known depiction of the Court of King's Bench in session.
In England, the Court of King’s Bench (KB) (or Queen’s
Bench (QB) depending on who was on the throne) began in the twelfth century as
a court at which the monarch literally presided; it was a circuit court which
would, from time-to-time, travel around the counties hearing cases. The Court of KB was thus in some sense
“virtual”, whatever wooden bench upon which he sat becoming the KB for the
duration of the trial. Kings would cease
to sit as judges and the KB later was interpolated into the system of courts
(there would be many internecine squabbles over the years) until (as the Court
of Queen’s Bench), under the Supreme
Court of Judicature Act (1873), it, along with the Court of Common Pleas, the
Court of Exchequer and Court of Chancery were merged to become the High Court
of Justice, each of the absorbed institutions becoming a division. The Common Pleas and Exchequer Division were
abolished in 1880 when the High Court was re-organized into the Chancery
Division, Queen's Bench Division and the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty
Division (the latter memorably known as “wills,
wives & wrecks” in legal slang).
The origin of the KB is a hint of why a king or queen can’t appear
before a court in the UK or other places in which they remain head of state:
Although it is in a practical sense now a legal fiction, all courts of law are
“their courts” of which they remain the highest judge.
Benches afforced with foreign judges, the Chinese
Communist Party and Hong Kong’s national security law
Multi-national benches are not uncommon. There have been courts operating under the
auspices of the League of Nations (LoN; 1920-1946) & United Nations (UN;
since 1945) such as the International Criminal Court (ICC), the International
Court of Justice (ICJ) and the various ad-hoc bodies set up to handle
prosecutions related to crimes in specific locations (Rwanda, the former
Yugoslavia et al) and the UK had the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council
(JCPC) which included senior judges from the Commonwealth. The JCPC functioned not only as a final court
of appeal for Commonwealth nations (a role for a handful it still fulfils) but
also as the appellate tribunal for a number of domestic bodies including some ecclesiastical
bodies, admiralty matters and even matters from the usually obscure Disciplinary
Committee of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. There were also the International Military
Tribunals (IMT) which tried matters arising from the conduct of German &
Japanese defendants from World War II (1939-1945), the bench of the latter
Tokyo Tribunal notably diverse although those of the subsequent dozen trials in
Nuremberg were staffed exclusively by US judges. A number of former colonies also use foreign
judges (and not always from the former colonial power).
However, what remains unusual is the matter of the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) deciding to have foreign judges serve on Hong
Kong’s Court of Final Appeal (HKCFA), established in 1997 when the Hong Kong
Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) was created upon Beijing regaining
sovereignty (under the “one country, two systems” (1C2S)) principle, with the
end of British colonial rule. At that
point, the HKCFA became the territory’s highest judicial institution, replacing
the JCPC in London. On the HKCFA’s bench
sits the Chief Justice (a Hong Kong national), several “Permanent Judges” and
some two-dozen odd “Non-permanent Judges” who may be recruited from Hong Kong
or from among lawyers of the requisite background from any overseas common law
jurisdiction. As non-permanent judges,
appointments have been drawn (from bar & bench) from Canada, Australia, New
Zealand and the UK.
Lindsay Lohan, foreign judge on the bench of The Masked Singer (2019), a singing competition, the Australian franchise of a format which began in the ROK (Republic of Korea (South Korea)) as King of Mask Singer.
While it may seem strange a developed country like the
People’s Republic of China (The PRC, the world’s second largest economy, a
permanent member of the UN Security Council and since 1965 the final member of
the original “Club of Five” declared nuclear powers) would have foreign judges
sitting in one of its superior courts, on the mainland the PRC operates under a
civil law system which, like the tradition in continental European, is based
primarily on written statutes and codes, unlike common law systems, which rely
heavily on case law and judicial precedent.
As a British colony, Hong Kong had used common law and under that system
had become a major regional and international presence, something in part due
to its judicial system being perceived as fair an uncorrupted; it was a “rule
of law” state. In the PRC there simply wasn’t
a body of judges or lawyers with the necessary background in common law to
staff the territory’s highest appellate court and significantly, at the time of
the handover from the Raj, Hong Kong was of great importance to the PRC’s
economy and the CCP understood it would be critical to maintain confidence in
the rule of law, investors and overseas corporations with Hong Kong resident
interests needing to be assured matters such as contracts would continue as
before to be enforceable.
So it was, literally, “business as usual”, whatever may
have been the fears about the political undercurrent. The growth of the mainland economy since 1997
has been such that the HKSAR now constitutes only a small fraction of the
national economy but analysts (some of whom provide advice to the CCP) understand
the linkages running through the territory remain highly useful for Beijing and
some long-standing conduits are still used for back-channel communications
about this and that. As far as business
is concerned, the operation of the legal system has remained satisfactory, even
though the CCP ensured that Beijing retained a reserved power to overturn the
HKCFA’s decisions.
The colonial era building where now sits the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal. Formally opened in 1912, it was built with granite in the neo-classical style and between 1985-2011 was the seat of the Legislative Council (LegCo).
However, in 2020, a “National Security Law” (technically
the Law of the People's Republic of China
on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative
Region and thus usually written in English as the “NSL”) was imposed. While not aimed at the regulation of business
or economic matters, it was wide in its scope and claims of application (the extraterritoriality
extending worldwide), essentially extending to the territory many of the laws of
the mainland regarding “political activities” and matters of “free speech”, the
latter widely interpreted by the CCP. Citing
the “political
situation”, two British judges in June 2024 resigned from the HKCFA,
prompted by Beijing’s recent crackdown on dissent in the city, something made
possible by the NSL. In his published letter,
one judge, his rationale for departure notwithstanding, did say he continued “…to have full
confidence in the court and the total independence of its members.”
As early as 2020, one Australian judge had already resigned, followed by
two others from the UK, both saying the Hong Kong government had “…departed from
values of political freedom and freedom of expression.” The CCP may have anticipated some objection
from the overseas judges because, since the passage of the NSL, no overseas judge
has been allocated to hear the “security-related” cases. The judicial disquiet seemed not to trouble
the territory’s chief executive, former police officer John Lee (Ka-chiu) (b
1957) who said the overseas appointments would continue to help “…maintain confidence
in the judicial system and… strong ties with other common law jurisdictions.”
In response to the departing judge’s comment, he claimed the NSL had “no effect” on judicial independence and the
only difference was that “…national security is now better safeguarded.”
Early in June, the Hong
Kong authorities arrested two men and one woman attending a FIFA World Cup
qualification match against Iran, their offence being “turning their
backs to the pitch and not standing during the performance of the national
anthem”, a police spokesman adding that anybody “…who publicly and intentionally insults
the national anthem in any way in committing a crime.” Before the NSL was imposed, bolshie Hongkongers
were known to boo the anthem to express discontent with their rulers; that definitely
will no longer be tolerated. The match
ended Iran 4: Hong Kong 2 but despite that, more than ever the HKSAR and the
Islamic Republic have much in common.
