Page 9 - Court: The Place of Law and the Space of the City

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civic programmes. So it is that the plan of the Law Court – as existing in ancient Roman basilicas – defined
axially before a raised apse, and the seat of the judiciary, came to be associated with spatial codes in the
places of Christianity.
These analogous organisational principles, so explicit in the exemplars of ancient Rome, did however
prove to be problematic for subsequent evolution in the perception of Law, when it switched from a quasi-
religious construct to an autonomous and secular civic practice, because of the increasing incongruity of
the notions of authorship. The autocratic rule of Rome by its emperor, whether Maxentius or Constantine,
framed the Law at the behest of a single figure. Although its juries and magistrates are known to have been
active agents in legal trials, they were subject to a hierarchy that fell beneath an individual of ultimate
seniority. The emperor was to the practice of Law like the figure of God was to the practice of Christianity,
as an agent of singular authorship. It is hence that the spatial manifestation of this hierarchy lent itself

Figure 5: Analytical diagram of sight lines within the Basilica Nova.