As a teenage queen, she could savour the delicious intrigue of power and the exquisite exercise of prerogative and caprice: extending or withholding her favour in the company of charismatic, important Lords Melbourne and Wellington.
This exercise of prerogative power gives the Crown authority to recruit members of the armed forces, appoint commissioned officers, and establish agreements with foreign governments to station troops in their territory.
While it is clear that prerogative powers cover international relations and the conclusion of treaties, it is settled UK constitutional law that an act of parliament – in this case the European Communities Act (ECA) 1972 – cannot be supplanted by the exercise of a prerogative power.
In the judgment of the court, the argument is contrary both to the language used by parliament in the 1972 act, and to the fundamental principles of the sovereignty of parliament and the absence of any entitlement on the part of the crown to change domestic law by the exercise of its prerogative powers".
However, in a ruling he said that it was up to the Foreign Office to rescind the appointment of a diplomat "if it considers appropriate … [this] avoids the risk of inconsistency and leaves the exercise of the prerogative untrammelled by a rival judicial enquiry".
They concluded: "In our judgment, the clear and necessary implication from these provisions taken separately and cumulatively is that parliament intended EU rights to have effect in domestic law and that this effect should not be capable of being undone or overridden by action taken by the crown in exercise of its prerogative powers".
Thus, the letter from the Ministry was not an exercise of executive prerogative power, but merely a statement of opinion.
The House of Lords held that this exercise of the prerogative was judicially reviewable, and the trade unions had a legitimate expectation of prior consultation before the ban was imposed.
An Order in Council is a law made directly by the British Crown in the exercise of its prerogative law-making power it previously possessed in respect of Singapore.
The pages of history display instances of the jury's exercise of its prerogative to disregard uncontradicted evidence in the name of justice; the most often commended examples are the nineteenth-century acquittals of defendants prosecuted under the fugitive slave law.
He is specifically charged with impeding the progress of legislation by threatening members of Congress if they favored legislation of which he disapproved and with seeking to coerce Congress by threatening to veto laws which Congress might pass in the proper exercise of its prerogatives.
