On English Royalty

Factual Questions
161

I wouldn’t say it’s perfectly kosher - it’s probably legal in most places but that’s not the same thing as being acceptable. The Catholic church prohibited second cousin marriage without a dispensation until the '80s. A famous ( or infamous) American politician’s first marriage was to a second cousin whom he later divorced and it’s hard say how much of the disapproval was because they grew up spending summers together and definitely knew they were relatives ( which often has something to do with the “ick factor” ) *, how much was because people didn’t believe him when he got an annulment after claiming he thought they were third cousins, and how much was because people believed he deliberately didn’t seek the dispensation “just in case”.

* There’s a difference between second cousins who met each other twice and ones who spent every summer and holiday at their common great-grandparents" home.

162

Here is a point that I feel should be borne out in this discussion. As a pure matter of law, King Charles is not “powerless”. A few reserve powers legally remain to him, and this does technically include the power to refuse assent to a bill passed by Parliament. It is true that the last time this power was used was in 1708 (when Queen Anne vetoed a Scottish militia bill – and even this last instance was upon the advice of her ministers). But I think that this explanation – that the Sovereign no longer uses this power “for fear of a constitutional crisis” (and of possibly becoming unpopular enough to lose the throne) is more accurate than to say that the King has “no power” or that he “must” sign every bill presented to him by Parliament. Legally, I believe that this simply is not true.

I will attempt to demonstrate this by means of a few simple arguments:

  • The prerogative to give or withhold Royal Assent to a bill is a matter of common law rather than of written statute, but it has always been there. No bill becomes law before the Sovereign signifies Royal Assent to it. This is still true in 2025.

  • Though fallen into disuse after 1708, no statute passed by the Westminster Parliament has ever taken away this power of the Sovereign, nor have the highest courts in the UK ruled that the power is now non-existent.

  • There is no legal mechanism to force the King’s hand / to formally sanction him for refusing to signify his Royal Assent to a bill.

  • The idea that the Sovereign acts on the advice of ministers / elected officials is a constitutional convention. The courts do not enforce constitutional conventions.

Therefore, I would posit that there is no “must” in it and that legally, the King can refuse his assent to any bill as things stand, and that bill will not become law at that moment. What long-term consequences it will lead to (the resignation of the government, the unpopularity of the King, the passage of a law stripping the King of his power of royal assent, the deposition of the monarchy and the installation of a republic, or whatever else might ensue) remains open to speculation, but in the moment, the king would be acting legally and no one could do anything to physically coerce or sanction him for doing so.

If anyone disagrees with my interpretation, please offer counterarguments.

I realize that the King actually doing so would probably result in a major shakeup of things (the situation with the Grand Duke of Luxembourg provides a possible outcome – the Luxembourg parliament stripped him of his veto power, which law I presume he signified his assent to. That said, prior to that, at the moment the Grand Duke refused to give his assent to the bill in question, he was acting perfectly legally and the bill didn’t get his assent, and was thus not a proper law at the time. Just like what I speculate above would happen if King Charles refused to assent to a British bill).

Compare this to the Emperor of Japan who, following the adoption of a more liberal constitution at the insistence of the Allies following World War II has officially no practical powers to speak of but is little more than a symbolic head of state. Or the King of Sweden – he also now has no powers at all enumerated in the Constitution. Not only is he not asked to give Royal Assent to bills, he is not even Commander-In-Chief of the military anymore. There’s some truly symbolic figureheads for you.

There is a notion that in the British monarchy (and other Commonwealth realms), the King or his viceroy (e.g. the Governor General and Lieutenant Governors in Canada) may quite legitimately exercise these few remaining disused powers if there is a crisis or exceptional situation, especially if their doing so would command popular support. There is the famous case in Australia of the 1975 dismissal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, for example, by the Governor General. I would highly recommend watching this video presented by Anne Twomey, Australian constitutional expert, on her channel Constitutional Clarion, analyzing the legitimacy of the whole affair. It might put some things into perspective.

In Canada, the Constitution Act, 1867 explicitly states that the Governor General may signify his assent to a bill passed by Parliament, refuse assent, or reserve the decision to the Sovereign. Moreover, the Sovereign has a period in which they can disallow a bill. The Lieutenant Governors of the provinces are also explicitly allowed to give or withhold assent to bills passed by the provincial legislature, or to reserve the decision to the Governor General. Now, it is my understanding that no Governor General has ever refused assent to a federal bill, but a number of provincial Lieutenant Governors have refused or reserved assent to provincial bills. In one case, assent was refused to a bill concerning banking that the LG thought was unconstitutional, but in another, IIRC, the LG refused assent to a bill ending prohibition in his province, which might have been more a matter of his own personal discretion. A veto or reservation of provincial legislation last happened in I think 1961, and would not be likely to happen today; all I’m saying is that in Canada there are more recent precedents for the exercise of the Royal Prerogative than in the UK.

163

Which bill, also, the recalcitrant monarch would presumably not assent to. Which would, indeed, be a constitutional crisis at best, or a revolution at worst.

164

I wouldn’t presume that.

The amendment to the Luxembourg constitution stripping the Grand Duke of the power to veto bills also passed without revolution. I don’t have a record of it, but I imagine the Grand Duke simply decided not to fight it, assented to the Bill and was perhaps glad to be relieved of the legal and moral responsibility for the content of the earlier bill he had refused to sign off on.

Or a different compromise might be found. Interesting what happened in Belgium in 1990. As a devout Catholic, King Baudoin refused to give Royal Assent to a bill liberalizing the laws on abortion (and in its history as a constitutional monarchy, withholding assent had I think happened only once before or not at all). However, he came to an agreement with the government: per a clause in the Belgian constitution, his ministers declared King Baudoin temporarily to reign pro forma, jointly assented to the bill in his stead, and the next day declared Baudoin able to reign again. I would write “LOL” here but that wouldn’t adequately convey the cynical nature of the solution.

165

I don’t think there’s any contradiction in saying that, legally, the king can do either X or Y but that he must do X. This is because the king’s actions — like everyone else’s — are constrained not jut by law but also by factors other than the law.

In the UK, the constitution comprises not just a number of fundamental statutes and legally enforceable common-law principles, but also a number of fundamental conventions. The constitional conventions are not enforceable in the courts but they are nevertheless enforceable — mainly, through political action.

In assessing whether the UK is a democracy, you can’t just have regard to the legal elements of the constitution; you have to consider the constitution as a whole. Arguing that the US isn’t a democracy because of the king’s theoretical legal right to withhold assent to legislation would be a bit like arguing that North Korea is a democracy because they hold elections in which people vote; in both cases, you’d be missing the wider picture.

166

I am aware that, while not legally enforceable, constitutional conventions are considered fundamental for the functioning of government and that their infringement can cause a constitutional crisis to occur. I see what you mean, I meant the “must” in the narrower sense of coercion through direct punishment or physical force. I guess you can stretch the meaning of the word to something that is just expected of you. Yes, you can pressure and censure the King, the risk of the monarchy becoming a republic can even loom over him, but you can’t directly require him to respect these conventions in the moment.

Walter Bagehot an English jurist, journalist and businessman wrote a book called “The English Constitution”, published in 1867. In it he famously claimed how while in theory, the Queen had a long list of archaic powers, in actual reality she had no power at all and even went on to somewhat preposterously claim that she had to sign her own death warrant if the two houses of parliament should send it up to her. As I recall, he wrote these claims as bald statements without seriously argumenting them, and the notion seems to have been repeated by one author to another. I’m merely saying that you can’t directly force the King to follow constitutional conventions. Yes, public opinion can pressure him, I’m just saying that under the current system, the King choosing to exercise his remaining powers against the advice of his government is perfectly legal.

167

Yes, it’s perfectly legal. It’s just not possible, which is more important.

Why is it not possible? Because the king doesn’t accept the advice of his ministers, the ministers resign. Constitutional convention, political reality and basic self-respect all require this. And, while the king can appoint other advisers, they are unlikely to accept appointment unless they are confident that the king will accept their advice, which in the circumstances they are unlikely to be. And, even if they do accept appointment on foot of a promise from the king, pinky-swear, that he will accept their advice, when he doesn’t accept their advice they will resign.

You very rapidly spiral into absurdities considering these hypotheticals. One of the reasons that ministers can’t serve if their advice is not accepted is that the House of Commons wouldn’t tolerate it — Parliament’s ability to hold the executive to account depends on the king acting on ministerial advice,and ministers being accountable to Parliament. So if a minister didn’t resign, he would lose a vote of no confidence in the House; if the ministers collectively didn’t resign, the government would fall. In theory the king could try to circumvent this by appointing ministers who weren’t in Parliament, but Parliament could frustrate the actions of those ministers by e.g. nullifying regulations made by the ministers (this is a power which parliament has that doesn’t require the Royal Assent); by refusing to enact a budget; by refusing to renew the Armed Forces Act; etc.

Basically, if the king doesn’t accept the advice of ministers accountable to parliament, you very quickly spiral into a situation in which democratic government collapses in the UK and the king’s attempt to substitute monarchical government in its place lacks all constitutional and political legitimacy. Realistically it couldn’t succeed but, if it did, this would be a coup d’etat.

I suppose ultimately all democratic constitutions are theoretically vulnerable to a coup d’etat; this particularly vulnerability might be unique to the UK.

168

What about on honors like titles? My understanding is a lot of these are issues upon the advise of ministers but ultimately it is the monarch’s power ad the fount of honours. What if Charles III said titles are not political rewards and refused to hand them out to the PM’s croneys?

169

The way I’ve heard it described is, the monarch can do anything they want… once.

170

In general, the crown’s prerogative in relation to the grant of honours is, like other crown prerogatives, exercised on the advice of ministers, and there’s a regular system for making nominiations, considering them, and then advising the sovereign.

But there is one qualification to this. By - ahem - convention, there is a small range of honours that are awarded at the discretion of the sovereign — the Order of the Garter, the Order of the Thistle, the Royal Victorian Order, the Order of Merit. Even these would usually be subject to prior consultation with the government, but no formal advice would be given.

It’s very unlikely that any monarch would take the view that honours “are not political rewards”, since they are widely used for precisely that purpose, and always have been. And, far from refusing to award them to a PM’s cronies, the award of honours to a PM’s cronies is formalised and institutionalised in the form of the resignation honours list, in which a retiring PM gets to reward his chums and sycophants.

171

And quite a few honours decisions were quite controversial at the time. I suppose it’s possible that the monarch might say privately to the PM (or perhaps it would be handled between their private secretaries) something like “Are you quite sure about X, and the risk of bad publicity?”. But the procedures and conventions are such that it’s understood not to be within the monarch’s discretion.

172

Yes. The classic statement of the UK consitutional position is that, when it comes to government p policy the monarch has the right “to be consulted, to encourage and to warn”. The Prime Minister generaly meets the monarch in private once a week, unless one or other of them is out of town, and those meetings are principal forum where these rights are exercised. But the meeting is completely confidential, no officials or others are present — just the monarch and the Prime Minister — no notes are taken and no announcement is made beyond the routine fact that the meeting has happened. There’s a strong expectation that neithre the monarch nor the PM will ever talk about what is said in these meetings.

All of this means is that the monarch is not without influence, and you could certainly argue that it is undemocratic that the holder of a hereditary office should have such influence. But influence is not power; the PM is free to ignore or reject encouragement and warnings offered by the monarch and either way, is politically accountable for the policy they adopt.

173

It certainly is.

174

My understanding was that in the later years of Elizabeth II’s reign, the PM took the monarch’s “suggestions” very serious. I’m not so sure that is the case under Charles III.

175

I think the PM would have been foolish to ignore her advice. By the end of her reign, she had seen what decisions were made and what resulted over many decades and many PMs.

176

I’m not sure why Charles’s suggestions wouldn’t be taken seriously. He has a lot of experience and decades of training for precisely this role. Some of his opinions are known to be a little out there, but not in areas where he’d be consulted by PMs.

177

My only theoretical way for the Monarch to not sign a bill into law is that if the Parliament and Ministers realize they screwed up (“Thou shalt commit Adultery”) , and asked the Monarch to give that version a pass while they fixed it. So, by request.

178

That is more or less what happened the last time that assent was withheld from a Bill, which was in 1708.

The government promoted a bill in parliament to establish a militia in Scotland, similar to the militia already established in England — the Scottish Militia Bill. This was part of a wider programme of rationalising and consolidating English and Scottish military administration and organisation, following the union of the two countries the year before. However by the time the Bill had completed its passage through Parliament the government had changed its mind on this particular point — they thought there was a risk that a Scottish militia might aid a Jacobite uprising. So their solution was to advise Queen Anne to withhold assent from the Bill, which she duly did.

Nowadays, if a Bill contains a screwup that needs to be fixed, the standard way of dealing with this is not to bring the Act into force until amending legislation to fix the screwup has been enacted, and the two pieces of legislation can be brought into operation simultaneously.

This doesn’t require the withholding or deferral of assent — it’s pretty standard in modern legislation for there to be a clause dealing with commencement, the effect of which that even after assent the Act doesn’t come into operation until an order is made (on ministerial advice) to bring it into operation. This is for prosaic reasons so that that preparations can be made, public servants can be trained, IT systems can be reconfigured, subsidiary legislation can be drafted, etc as required for the implementation of the Act. But it can also be used to defer the operation of an Act for political reasons, or because policy is changing, or to fix a screwup.

179

What then is the process if the monarch truly believes a bill should not come into effect like a bill to kill all the poor. A bill bad enough that the monarch would consider withholding Royal Assent.

180

But that doesn’t make it impossible. The end result would still be the bill doesn’t become law.

It makes it impractical for the monarch to use his theoretical powers but not impossible.