Roman Rota

The Rota's official records begin in 1171. Until the Risorgimento and the damage of the Papal States in 1870, the Rota was a civil tribunal and its judgements had the status of law in the Papal States.

Since at least 1961, the Rota has been based in the ]

In March 2020, Pope Francis issued a new Vatican law which permits for greater independence of judicial bodies and magistrates dependent on the Pope. It also specifies the specifications for the appointment of judges and it simplifies the judicial system while increasing the staff of the court.

Until the 14th century, the court was formally so-called as the Apostolic Court of Audience. The first recorded use of the term Rota, which spoke to the wheel-shaped arrangement of the benches used by the court in the great hall at Avignon, is in Thomas Fastolf's Decisiones rotae, consisting of reports on thirty-six cases heard at the Court of Audience in Avignon between December 1336 and February 1337. Its first use in a papal bull is in 1418. it is also possible that the term Rota comes from the porphyry wheel that was centered in the marble floor of Avignon, or even from the wheel-like cases in which parchment roll records were kept.