United Kingdom In the
Kingdom of England (up to 1707), the
Kingdom of Great Britain (1707–1800), and the
United Kingdom (since 1801), the royal prerogative was and is one of the central features of the
realm's governance. Constitutional theorist
A. V. Dicey defines the scope of prerogative powers as: The scope of the royal prerogative is difficult to determine due to the
uncodified nature of the
constitution. It is clear that the existence and extent of the power is a matter of the
common law of England, making the courts the final arbiter of whether a particular type of prerogative exists or not. Nevertheless, certain prerogative powers have been widely acknowledged and accepted over time, while others have fallen out of use. The royal prerogative is not constitutionally unlimited. In the
Case of Proclamations (1611) during the reign of King
James VI/I, English common law courts judges emphatically asserted that they possessed the right to determine the limits of the royal prerogative. Since the
Glorious Revolution in 1688, which brought co-monarchs
King William III and
Queen Mary II to power, this interpretation of there being a separate and distinct power of the judiciary has not been challenged by
the Crown. It has been accepted that it is emphatically the province of the court(s) to say what the law is, or means. This is a crucial corollary and foundation to the concept of the judicial power; and its distinct and separate nature from the executive power possessed by the Crown itself, or its ministers. In most cases, the Monarch exercises the prerogative powers only on the advice of the
Government of the day, either directly or through the
Privy Council.
British dependencies Generally,
the Crown retains all the power of the state in an overseas territory (or 'dependent territory' from 1983 to 2002 or 'Crown colony' before that), even if in practice it is not directly exercised. Thus the royal prerogative is in theory an unlimited, arbitrary authority. In
British overseas territories however, each inhabited territory has a constitution by which the territory is governed locally. The absoluteness of the royal prerogative in the colonies was however defeated in the case of
Campbell v Hall in 1774. This case decided that once a colony gained a representative assembly (or once the governor has been instructed to call one), the royal authority is limited to the familiar prerogatives; without the assembly's consent the Crown could not raise taxation nor change the law. Several of the colonies of the British West Indies thus became "settled colonies", and reverted to "crown colony" status only by Act of Parliament in the nineteenth century. In August 2009,
Michael Misick, first Premier of the
Turks and Caicos Islands, a
British Overseas Territory, resigned under charges of corruption and abuse of power. In order to restore the rule of law, the UK government took direct control of the government of the territory, under an
Order in Council of 18 March 2009, which suspended and amended parts of the Islands' constitution, and vacated all the offices of ministers and the House of Assembly. This action was not an exercise of the royal prerogative, as it was made under "the West Indies Act 1962 and of all other powers enabling Her to do so", but did vest wide discretionary legislative and executive powers in
Her Majesty's governor, who as in all British Overseas Territories, acts on the instructions of the UK government, not the monarch. A new
constitution was promulgated in October 2012 and the government was returned to full local administration after the
November 2012 elections. In the case of the
Chagos Archipelago, in 2000, the
High Court of Justice of England and Wales ruled that a local ordinance made by the Commissioner of the
British Indian Ocean Territory exiling the islanders was unlawful, a decision which was accepted by the British
Foreign Secretary Robin Cook. That Order was legislation passed under authority given by the royal prerogative, not an exercise of the prerogative itself, and was overturned as being beyond the powers given. After this decision, the British government issued an
Order in Council, a primary exercise of the royal prerogative, to achieve the same objective. This Order was also ruled unlawful by the
High Court, a ruling upheld in the
Court of Appeal. However, on Wednesday, 22 October 2008, the government
won its appeal in the
House of Lords against the previous rulings. The House decided by a three-to-two majority that the Order in Council was a lawful exercise of authority. In their speeches, the Law Lords admitted the government of the day was morally wrong to force out some 2,000 residents of the Chagos Archipelago, a British Crown colony, to make way for a US air base in the 1960s. Nevertheless, the majority could not find legal fault in the Order.
Canada In Canada, the royal prerogative is, for the most part, the same as that in the United Kingdom, as constrained by constitutional convention, although its exercise is usually through the federal
governor general in the
Privy Council of Canada, or the
provincial lieutenant governors in the
provincial executive councils. The royal prerogative in Canada is largely set out in Part III of the
Constitution Act, 1867, particularly section 9. As foreign affairs are a matter of royal prerogative, the power to declare war and deploy the
armed forces belongs to the Crown, though only in its
federal Cabinet (the
federal government), as outlined in sections 9 and 15 of the Constitution Act, 1867. issued by the Governor General-in-Council. The Canadian government has used the royal prerogative on two occasions to deny a passport to a Canadian citizen,
Abdurahman Khadr and
Fateh Kamel. Lawsuits filed at the
Federal Court,
Federal Court of Appeal, and ultimately the
Supreme Court of Canada did not find in favour of either Khadr, nor Kamel. The royal prerogative in Canada extends also to the granting of honours, as explained by the
Court of Appeal for Ontario in
Black v Chrétien (regarding
Conrad Black's entitlement to an appointment to the
House of Lords while a Canadian citizen).
Other Commonwealth realms In the other
Commonwealth realms, the royal prerogative can be or is specifically mandated to be exercised by the monarch's representative, the
governor-general. In the case of Australia, the royal prerogative, although resides in the monarch, it is exercisable by the
governor-general of Australia for military affairs and is defined by the
Constitution of Australia. The
constitution of a Commonwealth realm may also sharply limit the prerogative. In some cases, governmental acts which would normally require royal prerogative may be enacted through other means in the constitution, or through a legislative act in a Commonwealth realm, such as was seen in the United Kingdom, where a previous act of parliament dictated the conditions in which an early election could be called, which was a purely Royal Prerogative prior to its passage. ==Spain==