LAPIS MARMORIUS - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

LAPIS MARMORIUSAuthored

The Law Mind • 629 words

Definition

Lapis marmorius (Latin: "marble stone") refers to a large marble slab, approximately twelve feet long and three feet wide, historically situated at the upper end of Westminster Hall in London. A marble chair was erected upon it. The stone served two ceremonial functions: English sovereigns sat there during their coronation banquets, and at other times the Lord Chancellor occupied the chair when presiding over proceedings in Westminster Hall. The term appears in legal dictionaries primarily as a piece of constitutional and institutional history rather than as an operative legal concept.

Common Language

The component Latin words — lapis (stone) and marmorius (of marble) — are descriptive rather than technical. Any reader with basic Latin encounters no gap between the literal and legal meanings here. The legal dictionaries use the term as a proper name for a specific artifact, not as a class of legal objects. COMMON LANGUAGE section omitted: the term is effectively a proper noun in legal usage, and ordinary English offers no competing meaning worth distinguishing.

Why It Matters in Research

Lapis marmorius is a narrow historical reference rather than a working legal doctrine, and researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in two contexts.

First, institutional history of Westminster Hall. Westminster Hall was not merely a building; it was the seat of the common law courts — King's Bench, Common Pleas, and Chancery — for centuries. The physical arrangement of the hall, including the lapis marmorius, appears in older treatises and histories describing the ceremonial and jurisdictional geography of English legal administration. Researchers tracing the history of the Lord Chancellor's office, the Court of Chancery, or the constitutional role of the sovereign in legal proceedings may encounter passing references to this stone.

Second, terminological traps in Latin legal sources. Because the term is Latin and appears in dictionaries sandwiched between operational legal terms, a researcher skimming Black's might mistake it for a term of art with ongoing legal significance. It has none. It belongs to the category of entries — common in nineteenth-century dictionaries — that catalogued historical and antiquarian detail alongside living doctrine. A researcher who finds lapis marmorius cited in a primary source is almost certainly reading a descriptive or ceremonial account, not a legal rule.

No jurisdictional variation is relevant; the term is specific to English constitutional ceremony and has no transplanted meaning in American or other common law systems.

Historical Dictionary Support

Black's Law Dictionary and Rapalje & Lawrence are in near-verbatim agreement, both drawing on Wharton's Law Lexicon as their underlying source. Neither entry claims doctrinal significance; both treat the term as a historical artifact deserving brief description.

What the historical dictionaries do not address: the lapis marmorius fits within a broader category of ceremonial objects — alongside the Coronation Chair, the Stone of Scone, and the arrangements of Westminster Abbey — that marked the intersection of royal prerogative and judicial authority in medieval and early modern England. Dictionaries of the nineteenth century catalogued these items without exploring their constitutional symbolism. Researchers interested in that dimension will need to look beyond legal dictionaries to constitutional histories of England, records of the Court of Chancery, and accounts of coronation proceedings.

The placement of the entry in Black's immediately before the entry for LAPSE (to glide; to pass slowly) is purely alphabetical and carries no interpretive significance, though it illustrates the indiscriminate encyclopedic character of early American legal dictionaries.

Jurisdictional Note

Specific to English legal and constitutional history. The term has no recognized application in American, Canadian, Australian, or other common law jurisdictions. Researchers outside English legal history have no occasion to use it.

LAPIS MARMORIUSmain

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

A marble stone about twelve feet long and three feet broad, placed at the upper end of Westmin- ster Hall, where was likewise a marble chair erected on the middle thereof, in which the English sovereigns anciently sat at their cor- onation dinner, and at other times the lord shancellor. Wharton. LAPSE, v. To glide; to pass slowly, si- lently, or by degrees. To slip; to deviate from the proper path. Webster. To fall or fail. LAPSE, n. In ecclesiastical law. The transfer, by forfeiture, of a right to present or collate to a vacant benefice from a person vested with such right to another, in conse- ing away by one person of the mere personal goods of another from any place, with a fe- lonious intent to convert them to his (the taker's) use, and make them his property, without the consent of the owner. 2 East, P. C. 553; 4 Wash. C. C. 700. The felonious taking and carrying away of the personal goods of another. 4 Bl. Comm. 229. The unlawful taking and carrying away of things personal, with intent to deprive the right owner of the same. 4 Steph. Comm. 152. The felonious taking the property of another, without his consent and against his will, with intent to convert it to the use of the taker. 2 Leach, 1089. The taking and removing, by trespass, of personal property which the trespasser knows to belong either generally or specially to an- other, with the intent to deprive such owner of his ownership therein; and, perhaps it should be added, for the sake of some advan- tage to the trespasser, a proposition on