Source of authority for: "...and by the authority of the same..."
Dear Ministry of Justice,
Acts of Parliament claim their authority from:
"Be it enacted by the [Monarch]'s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament
assembled, and by the authority of the same,..."
Please provide the documentary records you hold creating this authority for each party to an act of parliament as Act of Parliament claim it is by their own authority as
"and by the authority of the same".
This is an admitted expressed self proclaimed authority.
Please provide the documents creating the authority for:
1 - The Monarch, and
2 - The Lords Spiritual, and
3 - The Lords Temporal, and
4 - The Commons.
Yours faithfully,
Marc Horn
Dear Marc Horn,
Thank you for your request for information from the Ministry of Justice
(MoJ), reference 231005028 : Please find attached the response.
Regards,
Siân Jones
Head of Legal and Professional Services | Secretary, Justices’ Legal
Advisers and Court Officers’ Service (formerly the Justices’ Clerks’
Society)
Legal Operations Team | Operations Directorate | HMCTS | Postpoint 6.10
|102 Petty France | London | SW1H
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Dear Ministry of Justice,
Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.
I am writing to request an internal review of Ministry of Justice's handling of my FOI request 'Source of authority for: "...and by the authority of the same..."'.
It has been claimed that I am asking for legal / philosophical advice.
My request is clear - I am asking for documents held which create the source of authority. Authority must come from somewhere and it must be recorded somewhere.
Without authority our political system would have no legislative standing.
A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/s...
Yours faithfully,
Marc Horn
R Wright left an annotation ()
There is a summary of the UK constitutional arrangements in, for example, the Supreme Court judgment in R (on the application of Miller and another) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union [2017] UKSC 5, which can be found at https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/... :
"The constitutional background
40. Unlike most countries, the United Kingdom does not have a constitution in the sense of a single coherent code of fundamental law which prevails over all other sources of law. Our constitutional arrangements have developed over time in a pragmatic as much as in a principled way, through a combination of statutes, events, conventions, academic writings and judicial decisions. Reflecting its development and its contents, the UK constitution was described by the constitutional scholar, Professor AV Dicey, as “the most flexible polity in existence” - Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (8th ed, 1915), p 87.
41. Originally, sovereignty was concentrated in the Crown, subject to limitations which were ill-defined and which changed with practical exigencies. Accordingly, the Crown largely exercised all the powers of the state (although it appears that even in the 11th century the King rarely attended meetings of his Council, albeit that its membership was at his discretion). However, over the centuries, those prerogative powers, collectively known as the Royal prerogative, were progressively reduced as Parliamentary democracy and the rule of law developed. By the end of the 20th century, the great majority of what had previously been prerogative powers, at least in relation to domestic matters, had become vested in the three principal organs of the state, the legislature (the two Houses of Parliament), the executive (ministers and the government more generally) and the judiciary (the judges). It is possible to identify a number of seminal events in this history, but a series of statutes enacted in the twenty years between 1688 and 1707 were of particular legal importance. Those statutes were the Bill of Rights 1688/9 and the Act of Settlement 1701 in England and Wales, the Claim of Right Act 1689 in Scotland, and the Acts of Union 1706 and 1707 in England and Wales and in Scotland respectively. (Northern Ireland joined the United Kingdom pursuant to the Acts of Union 1800 in Britain and Ireland).
[…]"
Mr Horn,
Thank you for your internal review request dated 31 October 2023. Please
see attached your response.
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Mr Horn,
Thank you for your internal review request dated 31 October 2023. Please
see attached your response.
Legal Operations
[1]HMCTS_BLK_DIGI
══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
This e-mail and any attachments is intended only for the attention of the
addressee(s). Its unauthorised use, disclosure, storage or copying is not
permitted. If you are not the intended recipient, please destroy all
copies and inform the sender by return e-mail. Internet e-mail is not a
secure medium. Any reply to this message could be intercepted and read by
someone else. Please bear that in mind when deciding whether to send
material in response to this message by e-mail. This e-mail (whether you
are the sender or the recipient) may be monitored, recorded and retained
by the Ministry of Justice. Monitoring / blocking software may be used,
and e-mail content may be read at any time. You have a responsibility to
ensure laws are not broken when composing or forwarding e-mails and their
contents.
References
Visible links
1. http://gov.uk/hmcts
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Thomas Onslow left an annotation ()
As indicated in their response, they do not have the information requested. It is the case that you are effectively asking for the source of state power, which they helpfully pointed out that scholars have been debating for centuries without an accepted conclusion (but we know Parliament has power to legislate because the common law tells us so).
The result of the internal review is not likely to fall within your favour.