Prohibitions del Roy (1607) 12 Co Rep 63; 77 ER 1342

A dispute over the respective authority of ecclesiastical and common law courts led to discussion before King James I. The King asserted a capacity to decide legal causes personally, drawing on his position as sovereign. Sir Edward Coke’s report records the judges’ response that disputes affecting subjects’ lives, property and rights belonged in courts of justice. The episode concerned the location and method of adjudicative authority rather than a modern judicial review claim. It became a constitutional reference point for the distinction between the monarch’s position and the trained judicial application of law.

Could the King personally determine subjects’ legal disputes, or did adjudication require the authority and specialised legal reasoning of the established courts of justice?

The report records the rejection of the King’s claimed personal authority to adjudicate legal causes. Coke explained that disputes about life, inheritance and property were to be determined in courts of justice using legal judgment acquired through study and experience. The King’s personal reasoning did not replace that process. The episode therefore supports judicial authority under law and limits personal executive adjudication. It should be described as a historical reported opinion or exchange, not a modern judgment delivered by Sir Richard Hutton in ordinary adversarial proceedings. The constitutional proposition concerns the legally constituted courts, and does not mean that ministers possess a general authority to decide disputes instead of judges.

The sovereign cannot personally adjudicate ordinary legal causes in place of the courts. Prohibitions del Roy emphasises that disputes affecting subjects’ rights require adjudication through established courts applying the trained reasoning of law.

Prohibitions del Roy is an early authority separating personal royal power from adjudication according to law. Coke’s reported exchange emphasised trained legal judgment rather than the monarch’s ordinary reason as the basis for deciding disputes. The report should not be treated as a modern appeal with a conventional court order. Nor does it transfer judging to ministers. Its constitutional lesson is that adjudication belongs to the legally constituted courts, subject to law, rather than to the sovereign personally.