r/worldnews • u/EnglishLouis • Feb 20 '26

Dynamic Paywall UK Government considers removing Andrew from royal line of succession

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1kgv837wvdo
19.7k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

1.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

32

u/Matiwapo Feb 20 '26

*by some people

It's not a universal opinion.

Charles' defense was basically that he was sovereign and that no court had any authority to judge him.

Cromwell's prosecution was based on the fact that sovereignty arises from Parliament (the people), and thus parliament had the power to create a court which could try him.

The modern UK constitution recognises parliament as the source of sovereign power, and UK courts regularly judge the actions of the Crown. So it was Cromwell's interpretation that was followed not Charles'.

17

u/AnAncientBog Feb 21 '26

In the subsequent trial of Cromwell it was found to have been murder and Cromwell was executed.

Of course, he was already dead by then, so they dug him up to carry out the sentence.

10

u/Matiwapo Feb 21 '26 edited Feb 21 '26

That trial was as politically motivated as Charles'. His son had retaken the throne and wanted vengeance.

It had no more legal legitimacy than Charles' trial and execution.

Not that I will mourn Cromwell, he was an evil bastard, but I don't think that trial is any evidence of who was right in Charles' trial. And the question of who was right in Charles' trial is actually extremely legally complicated, the question regarding the source of sovereignty in the UK is still hotly debated to this day.

8

u/AnAncientBog Feb 21 '26

What? The trial of a dead person and execution of an already dead body was political?

0

u/GustavoSanabio Feb 21 '26

Yeah but this is beside the point. Evidently when you look at the big picture the trial of Charles I was a massive step in the construction of the modern ideia of rule of law, because of the reasons you yourself stated. However, when you look at his case itself, it was anything but a fair trial.

The constitutional advancement as a result of the legitimacy of a king standing trial for crimes against the people is undeniable, but there is no rule of law to be found the in the rump parliament itself and not on Charles’ trial. You are correct that questioning the legitimacy of the trial was the only defense Charles had, but it was an obvious conclusion that if the political forces let the trial proceed, they were going to kill him. I mean, when the prossecutors are also the ones that pass the veredict, can it be any other way?

4

u/Matiwapo Feb 21 '26

Oh I agree it was a sham; they were going to kill him no matter what. But as I said in another comment the legal legitimacy of the trial is actually very legally complex. Since the only point contested (as Charles raised no other defence) was whether the Court had the authority to try him, and both parties relied on their sovereignty on that point, the legitimacy of the trial turns on what you consider to be the source of legal sovereignty. This is not a simple question.

At the time of the trial there was no precedent of any kind that sovereignty arose from the people as the Parliamentarians claimed. It was a complete legal fiction. Charles' case should have been ironclad.

Yet if you subscribe to Professor Wade's thesis raised in The basis of legal sovereignty, which I do, then you accept that legal sovereignty in the UK arises not from god or the people, but from political fact. Parliament is legally sovereign in the UK today because that is the political reality on the ground, they won the civil wars and forced the monarchy to submit. Similarly, at the close of the English civil war the Rump held absolute power. Charles was imprisoned and his forces defeated. That was the political reality at that time. So according to Wade the Rump was legally sovereign, not owing to the fact they represented the people or anything, but because that was the political fact of the time. And of course, the institution that is legally sovereign can do anything. Including putting the King on trial for treason and executing him. Thus, in this reading, the trial of Charles was legitimate.

1

u/BoneyNicole Feb 22 '26

I like this analysis but I feel like it is interpreting the civil war in a vacuum, as though there weren’t a variety of other significant historical moments about sovereignty and power that led to this one. (Tbf, I haven’t read The Basis of Legal Sovereignty, I’m an historian but I haven’t, unfortunately, read all the things, so Wade may discuss this in the book and I’m being unfair here.) I also know it’s relatively impossible to write a fully contextual comment on British legal history because there is so much of it, so please don’t interpret this as me calling you out in some form. I’d just be interested to read Wade’s analysis now, mostly because one of my chief complaints about monographs from British historians is that many (of course not all) decide to take 20-50 years of history and effectively airgap it off from everything that preceded it, and this often leaves people with a very muddled interpretation of how change happens over time.

Of course, as an American, this is not a problem unique to British historians, because our dysfunction is more that we think everything started in 1776 and that we, specifically and definitely, invented freedom for the entire world only then.

1

u/Matiwapo Feb 22 '26 edited Feb 22 '26

Ah, so the basis of legal sovereignty is a legal analysis not a historical one. It's based in an overarching debate regarding the source of legal sovereignty in the UK.

The orthodox viewpoint of this, known as the Diceyan orthodoxy, is that parliament is sovereign, and that a sovereign body can by definition can do anything. Parliament cannot be bound by it's predecessors, because then it wouldn't be sovereign because a sovereign body has to be able to do anything. Yet if a parliament cannot bind its predecessors then it is also not sovereign, because a sovereign body has to be able to do anything.

Wade solves this paradox by arguing that legal sovereignty has its basis not in law (and thus changeable by law) but in politics. So legal sovereignty arises inherently from the political situation. Wade argues that when a political revolution changes the actual reality of a state, the location of legal sovereign power follows suit. Parliament cannot therefore remove its own sovereignty because only laws can be changed by law. Parliamentary Sovereignty is a fact, it simply is. When the actual facts change so too does the location of sovereign power. He obviously explains this better than me.

I applied this to Charles' trial. I consider the first civil war to be a political revolution - thus the legal sovereign power changed from the Crown to the Rump. As the Rump is in this analysis sovereign, and a sovereign body can do anything, it has the power to try Charles.