Prohibitions del Roy
The King cannot personally act as a judge: judicial power is exercised by the courts according to law.
Facts
A dispute arose about the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts. The Archbishop of Canterbury suggested to King James I that the King could take any case he chose away from the judges and decide it himself in person, because the judges were merely his delegates. The question was put to the judges, led by Sir Edward Coke, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas.
Legal principle
Coke CJ, with the agreement of the other judges, advised that the King in his own person cannot adjudge any case, either criminal or civil, but that this ought to be determined and adjudged in some court of justice, according to the law and custom of England. When the King said that he thought the law was founded on reason and that he and others had reason as well as the judges, Coke replied that cases are decided not by natural reason but by the artificial reason and judgment of law, which requires long study and experience. The case is an early statement of the independence of the judiciary and of the rule of law.
Related cases on royal prerogative
- Attorney General v De Keyser's Royal Hotel Ltd [1920] AC 508
- Blackburn v Attorney General [1971] 1 WLR 1037
- Case of Proclamations (1611) 12 Co Rep 74
- Chandler v Director of Public Prosecutions [1964] AC 763
- Council of Civil Service Unions v Minister for the Civil Service [1985] AC 374
- Laker Airways Ltd v Department of Trade [1977] QB 643
- R (Abbasi) v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs [2002] EWCA Civ 1598
- R (Bancoult) v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (No 2) [2008] UKHL 61, [2009] 1 AC 453
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