Times and places in which justice was administered

During the Monarchy the king exercised his judicial functions in the open, sitting on an ivory chair (sella curulis) placed on an elevated platform (tribunal)™ In the republican period the praetor usually heard cases in the comitium, the area of the Roman Forum where the comitia curiata used to meet, also sitting on a sella curulis placed on a tribunal.⁵' Below the tribunal were the seats reserved for the litigants and their representatives.

Magistrates were allowed to proceed with their judicial activities on the days on which meetings of the popular assemblies were held {dies comitiales) as long as this did not prevent them from performing their duties in the assemblies.^[415] The Law of the Twelve Tables provided that proceedings had to begin before noon and the decision had to be pronounced by sunset.^[416] It remains unclear, however, whether this rule referred to the proceedings before the magistrate {in iure) or to the proceedings before the judge {in iudicio). Moreover, it seems unlikely that his rule continued to apply after the introduction of the formulary system in the second century BC.