CONSTITUTION & ADMINISTRATIVE LAW - Coursework Example

He argues that they are indeed acts of necessity, which the government performs in sudden and extreme emergency, especially when it is in the public interest to do so. This essentially contradicts Dicey’s understanding of the royal prerogative. This is so considering that the power of war, which is generally, one of the significant powers of the prerogative, would anyway be an exception. The above differences in argument, therefore, call for reexamination into other theories in order to understand the significance of the royal prerogative2.

In Attorney General v DE Keyser’s Royal Hotel Ltd , Lord Parmoor said that a right may be common to the rulers and the subjects; nevertheless, that does not qualifies it to be a prerogative right. Instead, he argued that Royal prerogative means a privilege in the executive that may be of an exclusive and a special character. Similarly, Blackstone concurs that the prerogative covers those actions that no person or institution other than the executive may undertake3. Among prerogatives contemplated in this explanation include the making of treaties and the deployment of armed forces.

However, it is observable that the Blackstone’s argument contradicts the judicial reasoning as to what the prerogative is. To shed more light on this, an examination of the case of R v Criminal Injuries Compensation Board, Ex parte Lain will be of help. In this case, the board that was to investigate and make recommendation on the compensation to victims of violence through ex gratia payments, was appointed by the executive4. The key issue here is that the board was set up by the executive in disregarded the agreement between the Judiciary and the applicant.

Clearly the prerogative act was used in doing this, arguably though, giving out money to the victims of violence is not such unique to deserve direct action of the executive. Moreover, Wade an administrative theorist agrees with the arguments of Dicey and Blackstone albeit at