Chief Justices of the Supreme Court

Parliament Square

London

SW1P 3BD

25 January 2017

The Royal Prerogative

My Lords and Lady

I suppose having been brought up on Dicey’s Law of the Constitution, I

should expect that our entire legal profession should be unaware of what

English Law actually has to say on the matter. Having read Dicey and

Bagshot also – both, I have to say, painful experiences yet both are loved

by politicians and our legal profession.

Dicey, on dealing with the Royal Prerogative attemps to compare our legal

system with that of the French. Yet both have an entirely different

starting point. Under our legal system we are innocent unless the King can

prove us guilty in a court of law before a jury of our peers. In the French

system, you are guilty unless you can prove yourself innocent. A system of

law far inferior to ours. You were of course right to deny Mrs May the use

of the prerogative, but for the wrong reasons.

I feel a history lesson is needed. so if you will bear with me I would be

grateful.

Acknowledged as the foremost political scientist of the 15th Century, Chief

Justice of the Common Pleas Sir John Fortesque KB clearly laid out the

limits of the authority of England’s Kings and what the people did to ensure

good government.

The Royal Prerogative was given to the King to enable him to govern this

Ancient Kingdom properly.

(1) First, strict rules were laid down over the use of the Royal

Prerogative. The prerogative was given to the King for his personnel use

only.

(2) The King was refused permission to allow anyone else to use the

prerogative even as a very temporary loan. It remains with the King and

only the King may use it.

(3) If the King is too sick to govern as in the case of King George III, a

Regent is appointed and a very limited part of the Royal Prerogative is

passed to him to allow government to continue. BUT and it is a very big

but, the Regent cannot take us to war or if we are at war, take us out of

war. That along with other major authority rests with the King and only

with the King. The Regent only gets the minor parts of the Royal

Prerogative assigned to him to allow the day to day management of the

Kingdom.

Any attempt to remove the prerogative from the King is to imagine the death

of the King, in our case Queen as a fully sovereign Queen of England. If

you have done your homework you will know this constitutes an act of treason against Her Majesty contrary to the 1351 Treason Act which is still fully on the statute books.

The House of Commons Library issued a paper on the Royal Prerogative in

which they stated that it is very difficult to put limits on the prorogative. This is complete nonsense. The King may use the Royal Prerogative to do anything which benefit’s the Kingdom and his subjects.

If however his use harms even the lowliest of his subjects, that use of the

prerogative is illegal, null and void. So no one can remove the prerogative

from the King because to attempt that is to commit treason and the King

cannot surrender the Royal Prerogative because to do so would diminish the

Crown and that can never happen as it is the height of illegality.

You should also be aware that every EEC/EU Treaty was signed using the

Prerogative which we all agree cannot be used by ministers to make or unmake treaties. Your ruling has just voided, rightly, every EU Treaty ever made.

We are, in effect as a result of your ruling given for the wrong reasons,

now free of Europe. You will of course now issue bench warrants for the

arrest for treason of everyone who has been a party to signing any of these

treaties going back to the survivors of Edward Heath’s cabinet.

I would recormend if you have not already done so, reading the works of

Henry DeBracton C J 1230. Sir John Fortescue C J 1420, Sir Edward Coke CJ

1628. Sir Mathew Hale C J 1713, Blackstone C J 1768 and of course Chitty

1820 Barrister at law, or Professors Maitland and Taswell-Langmead. Both

constitutional lawyers are worth looking at.

Respectfully submitted,

Albert Burgess