Bodies of law: The divine architect, common law and the ancient constitution

This article addresses the architecture of the four Inns of Court in London as repositories for the body of law (corpus iuris). The buildings axe perceived as visual representations of the unwritten constitution; evidence that the sign, not the text, remains the predominant form through which the constitution manifests its content. It is in this context that the self-governing Inns are interpreted as microcosms of the City of God, envisaged by Saint Augustine and prefiguxed in ancient Greece by the Republic of Plato. The Inns synthesise these classical and Christian precepts; thereby creating a unique commonwealth whose Utopian ideals are based on the application of Justitia, or righteousness: an ethical rather than a legal concept which underpins the English constitution. The argument proposes a correlation between architectuxal development at the Inns and the challenge posed to the institutional authority of the law by the new learning of the Renaissance. It is the semiotics of legal architecture rather than its historical provenance which is central to my analysis. I attempt to comprehend the effect of the influences outlined above on the form and content of the common law, the legal institution and the ancient constitution. © 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers.