This chapter examines the kinds of legal procedure adopted by various ancient legal systems to conduct legal proceedings in a court. The areas covered include the constitution of courts, preliminary court proceedings, valid evidence, presentation and evaluation of evidence, and the final verdict, including the possibility of appeals. Discussions include judges and court personnel, the physical space of courts, distinctions between civil and criminal cases, plaint and plea, sureties, and legal representation. Under evidence there is examination of witnesses, documents, oaths, ordeals, torture for evidentiary purposes, and forensic investigation, and punishment for perjury. Once a verdict is reached by the court, there are issues relating to the recording and the enforcement of the verdict. There is wide diversity in the legal procedure recorded in the sources from different legal traditions. Some deal with the topic explicitly, while in others we have to deduce the procedure from material on court cases.

Lowell’s attraction to the sonnet was historical and architectural and yet the form itself, one he wrestled with above all others, had at its origin desire and unrequited love. For Lowell, the little song of the sonnet worked well as a house for the complaint, “an expression of grief, a lamentation, a plaint” (OED). As far back as the fourteenth century, Chaucer used it as a title for poems (“The Complaint unto Pity,” c. 1368) and complaints hold both an expression of torment or grief and a song. In the 1946 volume, Lord Weary’s Castle, Lowell uses the sonnet form to express such a plaint, in this case as a measure to aid in indirect self-reflection (“The North Sea Undertaker’s Complaint”). Life Studies (1959) finds Lowell still ruminating on the sonnet form and its expressive capacities, as we see in the triple sonnet “Beyond the Alps,” pivoting as it does between subjects and acting as an opportunity for historical rather than personal insight. Day by Day (1977) roots itself in the personal and introduces looser forms. The sonnet’s acoustic energies are not bottled here but the poems participate in sonnet-like thinking.