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Orders touching calls to
Bar and contempt of the Benchers, 1556. The early records
were badly charred in the Blitz, but have been painstakingly
restored.
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None of the inns of court has ever been incorporated. They are
voluntary associations, without charters or statutes, their constitutions
based on custom and self-regulation. There is no permanent head
of house, but each year a Treasurer is elected to preside over the
society. When first we learn anything of the constitution of the
Inner Temple, at the end of the fifteenth century, it was ruled
by a Treasurer and three governors, elected by the 'society' or
fellowship. As in all the medieval inns of court, the fellowship
consisted of all the members of masters' commons, including barristers
as well as benchers. In the Tudor period, however, the title of
master came to be appropriated to the benchers alone. The Masters
of the Bench were considered in the early sixteenth century as associates
of the governors, and by the time of Elizabeth I had taken over
from them the control of the Inn, as a governing body acting under
the chairmanship of the Treasurer. The last election of governors
was in 1566.
The most solemn business meetings of the Inn are
called 'parliaments', a term also used in the Middle Temple. Records
of the Inner Temple parliaments survive from 1505 to the present.
Between parliaments, decisions are made at meetings called 'bench
tables'. The Inn has books of Bench Table Orders from 1668 to the
present.
New benchers have always been elected by the Bench
of the Inn, and the decision whether or not to elect has been held
to be unreviewable (Re Abraham Hayward Q.C., 1845). Calls
to the Bar may once have been less formal, taking place at moots.
But in 1556 it was ordered by the parliament that utter barristers
should be called only by the Bench, 'and that all those which shall
thereafter be thus called shall come before the Bench at the board's
end or elsewhere at the appointment of the Bench, there to understand
of the ancient bencher there present the duty of an utter barrister'.
This order is still in effect observed; calls to the Bar take place
at parliaments, held at the board (or table) in open hall, with
a suitably edifying charge from the 'ancient bencher there present'
(usually the Treasurer). The benchers also have the power to disbench
and disbar for misconduct. Appeals against such disciplinary decisions
lie to the judges as visitors; the first recorded instance of such
an appeal was in the seventeenth century.
In 1967 the inns agreed to form a Senate of the
Four Inns to coordinate policy and practice, especially in relation
to education and discipline; this was reconstituted in 1974 as the
Senate of the Inns of Court and the Bar, which also took over the
functions of the old Bar Council. The regulations for call to the
Bar, and the control of professional discipline, are now for the
most part delegated to the Senate.
Introduction
| Inner Temple History
| Keeping
Term 
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