Case of Proclamations (1611) 12 Co Rep 74; 77 ER 1352

King James I sought to control new building in London and the manufacture of starch from wheat through royal proclamations. Questions arose about whether those restrictions could be imposed without parliamentary authority where existing law did not prohibit the conduct. The judges, including Sir Edward Coke, were asked to advise on the Crown’s powers. The report concerns that constitutional opinion rather than a modern claim brought by the House of Commons against the King. The disputed practices supplied the setting for a broader question about changing the law by executive command.

Could the Crown use a proclamation to prohibit conduct or create offences beyond existing law, without obtaining legislative authority from Parliament for the proposed restrictions?

The judges rejected the proposition that royal proclamation alone could alter the common law or create an offence where none previously existed. The Crown possessed only the prerogative powers recognised by law. It could act within those powers and enforce existing legal restrictions, but could not turn otherwise lawful conduct into an offence simply by announcing a prohibition. The opinion therefore placed a legal limit on executive law-making. Its importance is not that every use of a proclamation was unlawful; it is that the legal consequences claimed for a proclamation required an existing source of authority. The report should be described in its historical setting, without inventing a modern claimant, defendant or statutory judicial-review process.

In the case of Case of Proclamations (1611) 77 ER 1352, 12 Co rep 74, it was found that common law defines the degree of royal prerogative. It was also held that the Crown is not entitled to legally utilise its prerogative powers outside the degree it is defined.

The Case of Proclamations is an early authority for legally limited executive power. It is best understood as an opinion given by judges about the Crown’s claimed powers, rather than modern adversarial litigation between named parties. Its enduring importance is the distinction between executing existing law and creating new law by executive command. Read alongside De Keyser when considering statutory control of the prerogative. The old citation and reporting date should be retained accurately without suggesting that modern judicial-review procedure existed in the seventeenth century.