CC BY
2УДК 34
Safaryan L.
student, faculty of law HSE University (Moscow)
THE CROWN: DEFINITION AND ITS ROLE IN THE UK LEGAL SYSTEM
Аннотация: the article explores the evolving role of the British Crown within the legal and governmental framework of the United Kingdom, focusing on its transformation from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional one. The British monarchy, an institution with roots tracing back to the 12th century, has undergone significant changes, particularly in the aftermath of events like the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution of 1688-1689. Once the source of unchecked royal power, the Crown's authority has since been constrained, with political power shifting to Parliament.
Ключевые слова: British crown, constitutional monarchy, absolute monarchy, legal system, British constitution, parliamentary democracy.
In this essay I would like to describe the role of the Crown of British Empire within the legal system of Britain. When we show modern British legal system is structured and what functions the Crown we automatically assume, that the Crown's purposes are only formal and, constitutionally, the monarch is just the head of all the ceremonial processes of parliamentary democracy, has some privileges and attributes, but does not distribute and does not control the enormous power that is formally created on his behalf. But the institution of Britain monarchy would not last as long and would not be considered as a necessity for Britain legal and governmental existence, if its role would as insignificant as it seems on the first revision. The English monarchy is a very old institution of power. Its history goes back to the 12th century. back to 829 and King Egbert. The main features of this institution are heredity and traditionalism. In the history of the English monarchy, there were only 11 years (1649-1660) when the line of kings was interrupted, but then everything returned to normal. The English
monarchy is much older than the English Parliament, which occurred in the XIII century. It is also older than the oldest university in Britain. The only similar institution in its antiquity in modern Europe is the Institute of the Papacy. Throughout its long existence, the monarchy has undergone many changes. What we should focus on is the transformation of the Crown through out the centuries. It has managed to go through the path of transformation from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional one [4].
The process of transformation of concepts The "king" and "crown" have occurred throughout many centuries of the history of the English Constitution. There was a time, when the English king had unlimited power, which is also called absolute monarchy (the reign of the Tudor dynasty - XVI century.). But the civil war took with it most of the royal prerogatives, and the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688-1689 limited the field of royal activity and influence even more. Previously, the concept of constitution was orbital towards the monarch. The government directly depended on the character and mood of the monarch [2]. But everything changed very dramatically: the center of active political activity moved from the crown to the parliament, the sovereign, was still the ruler but his (or hers) power was not ultimate. We not going to get into the detailed system of the directs duties of the Crown, as simple factology which is available information for everyone. What we going to do is we going to summarize main purposes of the Crown according to today's legal reality of British governmental system, and then we going to suggest outer perspective on the nature of modern institution of Crown. To help with elaboration of our research, let us refer to the Walter Bagehot's work "The English Constitutional, c.38-73]. The author express interesting points on the matter of the monarchy.
He says that the sovereign is the head of our society. If he or she did not exist the Prime Minister would be the first person in the country. He and his wife would have to receive foreign ministers, and occasionally foreign princes, to give the first parties in the country, he and she would be at the head of the pageant of life, they would represent England in the eyes of foreign nations, they would represent the Government of England in the eyes of the English. So from that point of view we can conclude, that diplomatic missions are very much what the Crown has been in charge, since the
sovereign stopped being the ultimate source of power. But, also, Walter Bagehot described very interesting role of the Crown, which wgoing to focus further. He wrote, that the popular theory of the English Constitution involves an error as to the sovereign. In its oldest form at least, it considers him as an "Estate of the Realm," a separate coordinate authority with the House of Lords and the House of Commons. This and much else the sovereign once was, but this he is no longer.
What authority could only be exercised by a monarch with a legislative veto. To state the matter shortly, the sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy such as ours, thrrights — the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn. And that is the functioning and the general role of the Crown were viewed back in the second half of the nineteenth century. I believe we can trust this author on this matter, as he is considered to be one of the leading specialist on constitutional law of that time. Taking everything that been observed above into consideration, now I wanted to draw the attention to the phenomenon of British unwritten constitution. legal experts on British constitutional law specify thrcomponents: statutory law (statute law), common law (common law), constitutional convention. The sources of constitutional norms can be statutes, judicial precedents and constitutional agreements. American lawyer Sidney Fisher [3, c.20] said that «this is an unwritten constitution, which means the custom of the nation, expressed in organic law and compiled from acts of parliament, government practice, historical precedents and court decisions», and this vision of structure of British constitution.
But I wanna suggest additional perspective. From my point of view, the sovereign takes a huge part in implementation of constitutional justice. We can say, that even today The Constitution of Great Britain can be described as a combined one, the process of transformation of which cannot be considered fully completed even today, especially against the background of globalisation processes. Even today constitutional experts do not have same approach regarding describing the contents of the constitution. And I suggest to view the constitution is an interaction of legal acts precedents court decision itself. And in that sense, it seems only logical to suggest that the Crown is the guarantor of Constitution. It is also a common rhetoric to describe the
role of the Crown as a the source of all justice in the UK. It is to these days accustomed to formulate and articulate that the thrpowers: the judicial, the executive and the legislature, operate '»in the name of the Crown», even though, obviously, there is the concept of separation of powers is implemented. In the end of these essay I would like to purpose the following thesis.
The British Crown transformed from being the source of ultimate power into the manifestation itself of the constitutional power. The thing is, before being a constitutional monarchy, Britain was an absolute monarchy. The absolute monarchism stands that all the judicial, the executive and the legislature is created by the Crown, coming form the Crown and protected by the Crown. But as The monarchy transformed into a constitutional one, the constitution became the source that validates executive judicial and legislature separately, and the Crown delegate the power to the constitutional system and protects it. That is how the role of the Crown in the legal system should be understood.
СПИСОК ЛИТЕРАТУРЫ:
1. Bagehot W. The English Constitution (1873). Oxford, 2009, pp. 38 // https://historyofeconomicthought.mcmaster.ca/bagehot/constitution.pdf;
2. Blackburn R. Magna Carta today. The British Library, 2015 // https: //w. bl. uk/magna-carta/articles/britains-unwritten-constitution;
3. Fisher S.G. The Trial on the Constitution. Philadelphia, 1862. P. 20;
4. The Constitution Society // https://consoc.org.uk/the-constitution-explained/the-uk-constitution/
