Star Chamber

The court of Star Chamber, in Latin Camera stellata, was an English court that sat at the royal Palace of Westminster from the late fifteenth century to the mid-seventeenth century, about 1641. It was composed of privy counsellors and common-law judges and existed to supplement the common-law and equity courts in civil and criminal matters. It was originally established to ensure the fair enforcement of laws against socially and politically prominent people so powerful that ordinary courts might hesitate to convict them. Mainly a court of appeal, it could impose any penalty except the death penalty in its own right, and at various times it had sub-courts for particular areas, notably for appeals of poor man's causes. The court evolved from meetings of the King's Council. The Star Chamber Act 1487 of Henry VII's second Parliament did not actually empower it but created a separate tribunal distinct from the general Council. In modern usage a star chamber is a metaphor for a secretive body with arbitrary rulings, though at least one academic regards the idea that the court acted arbitrarily as a myth.