Knife, Stone, Paper – Stephen Sedley – London Review of Books
‘Working in 2010 on a knotty judgment about the power of the home secretary to include additional criteria in immigration rules that she had previously laid before Parliament as required by statute, something clicked in my memory. Four centuries earlier, in 1611, in a decision known as the Case of Proclamations, it had been ruled that “the King by his proclamation or other ways cannot change any part of the common law, or statute law, or the customs of the realm … The King hath no prerogative, but that which the law of the land allows him.” It gave a key to the question, since immigration rules are made, without need of statutory authority, under the prerogative power to control entry into the realm, a power which is itself part of the common law and subject to its constraints. It was so when Elizabeth I’s autocratic successor, James I and VI, wanted to rule by proclamation; it was so in 2010 when Theresa May wanted to use the royal prerogative to bypass Parliament; it was still so in 2017 when it was proposed that the UK leave the EU by ministerial fiat rather than parliamentary authority, and again in 2019 when Elizabeth II was required by Boris Johnson to prorogue Parliament for no recognised reason.’
London Review of Books, 1st July 2021
Source: www.lrb.co.uk
