Talk:Reserve power

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Japan

This section seems to be anti-US when referring to the end of WWII, the Japanese Surrender, and Japan's new constitution. The part in question: This is because after the Nuclear Bomb (Atomic Bombs) drop on japan in World War 2. The Japanese Empire surrender to the United State and was forced to sign the Constitution of Japan isn't grammatically correct either. This section should be reworded, and changed to a neutral point of view. --Msl5046 12:46, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

United Kingdom

- Re: 2) The refusal to dissolve Parliament when requested by the Prime Minister. This was last reputedly done in 1910 (but George V later changed his mind), but certainly not within the past century. If you mean the past century to be the twentieth, 1910 was in the past century. If you mean the past century to be the last hundred years, everything after 1905 (including the year 1910) is within the past century. This statement is self-contradictory, and should be reworded.

The change has now been made.

- Re: 1) The appointment of a prime minister. This was last done in 1974 when Parliament was hung and the Queen appointed Harold Wilson as prime minister. As far as I am aware, the reigning monarch uses this reserve power following each and every election: by convention he or she invites the leader of the party winning the most seats to Buckingham Palace and asks him or her to become Prime Minister of the new government. If this is correct then this section of the article is inaccurate. Can someone confirm this and make the edit if necessary? - Hux 12:49, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dissolution of Parliament

I propose to remove the statement that the Queen or a Governor-General can dissolve Parliament against the advice of his/her ministers. The Proclamation for Dissolving the present Parliament and Declaring the Calling of Another is always issued "by and with the Advice of Our Privy Council" [1] [2], and similarly art. 32 of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia provides that writs for elections have to be issued by the Governor-General in Council. These cannot therefore be reserve powers. The Queen / Governor-General can refuse to dissolve Parliament, but the only way the Queen or a Governor-General can force the dissolution of Parliament and call another against the advice of ministers is by dismissing the Government and appointing a caretaker Prime Minister who promises to advise such a proclamation, as Malcolm Fraser did in 1975. Andrew Yong 17:04, 6 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

United States

I think the US section should be deleted. The American president doesn't really have "reserve powers" in the sense of this article; powers such as the veto, which are reserve powers in a parliamentary system, are just regular old powers of office in the American system. In particular, the president is free to veto legislation simply because he does not agree with it; it doesn't have to be because he's defending the constitution.

The president also has emergency powers, such as declaring martial law. That's similar to the notion of a reserve power, but not in my estimation quite the same thing. --Trovatore 19:33, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The United States section has been deleted.

Royal Prerogative

This article is written in a very confusing way. Are the enumerated powers supposed to be reserve powers? If so, some of this is clearly wrong as the royal prerogative is not in any sense a reserve power. --Daniel C. Boyer 17:20, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

UK (again)

To appoint a Prime Minister of her own choosing. This was last done in Britain in 1963 when Elizabeth II appointed Sir Alec Douglas-Home as Prime Minister.

I thought she appointed him because Harold Macmillan, by the outgoing Prime Minister, formally recommended that she send for him. There may not have been a formal process for selecting a leader but there were certainly soundings and the "customary process".

(1974) The Queen then asked Harold Wilson, leader of the Labour Party, which had the largest number of seats in the Commons but not a majority, to attempt to form a government with the support of the Liberals). Wilson agreed, on condition that, if the arrangement with the Liberals broke down, the Queen would dissolve parliament and call a new election, rather than give the Liberals the opportunity to offer their support to, or even form a coalition government with, the Conservatives.

I don't think there was ever any formal agreement between Labour & Liberals - indeed I recall reading that Wilson told Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe quite clearly that they were not needed. The bit about a new election seems to be a mangling of the story Wilson's press secretary Joe Haine recalled to Alan Clark (reproduced in a letter in the paperback edition of Clark's The Tories: Conservatives and the nation state 1922-1997) that the government discretely asked the Palace if a dissolution of Parliament and a general election would be granted in the event of a defeat on the initial Queen's Speech. This was in turn conveyed to the Conservatives who subsequently did not force a division on the speech at all. But this was after Wilson had accepted office and was also a means to stop the Conservatives forcing the issue, not to keep the Liberals in toe. Indeed given Labour's historic scepticism about coalitionism (MacDonald left deep scars), it would be very odd for Labour to seek formal agreements at first - rather they would try to govern alone and seek a majority at the first opportunity. (The later Lib-Lab pact was negotiated after some years in office to overcome existing difficulties once governing alone had been shown to be so difficult in practice.) Timrollpickering 06:04, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Portugal

There are reserve powers such as veto: by constitutional reasons, send to the constitutional court; by political reasons, up to three times. and also dissolution of assembly etc. The president does not hold any executive power. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 163.1.180.84 (talk) 17:14, 3 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

New Zealand

I've added fact tags to relevant parts of the New Zealand section, largely because they appear to contradict the Cabinet Manual, specifically that the Governor-General is still bound by the convention of responsible government ("The Queen reigns but the government rules so long as it has the support of the House of Representatives"). I'd be interested to see anything that backs the proposition that a Governor-General can dismiss a Prime Minister who still has the confidence of the House. --LJ Holden 00:44, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Australia: Royal Powers Act 1953

I think the writers of the paragraph about the Royal Powers Act 1953 have misunderstood something rather important. They talk about the Constitution, but the RPA had absolutely nothing to do with the Constitution. It had to do with letting the Queen, when present in Australia, exercise the powers given to the governor-general by acts of the Australian Parliament. The Constitution is most definitely not an act of the Australian Parliament. And even if it were, no act of the Australian Parliament can purport to give the governor-general's powers specified in the Constitution to anyone else - not even to the Queen herself, because that would amount to an amendment of the Constitution, and we all know there's only one way to do that, a referendum.

The link that supports that paragraph is a dead link. We need to get the wording right, and find a better source than my ramblings at User talk:JackofOz#British monarch exercising ceremonial power in other realms. -- Jack of Oz [Talk] 00:38, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've had this discussion with Miesianiacal previously. He uniquely contends that the RPA allows the Queen to exercise the Governor-General's :constitutional powers, and he does this from no other source but himself. David Smith addresses this in his book, and also at a Senate lecture in 1996:

In preparing for the 1954 royal visit to Australia—the first by a reigning monarch—the Government wanted to involve the Queen in some of the formal processes of government, in addition to the inevitable public appearances and social occasions. But the Government’s legal advisers suddenly discovered what had been apparent to some writers at the time of Federation.[16] They pointed out that the Constitution placed all constitutional powers, other than the power to appoint the Governor-General, in the hands of the Governor-General and that he exercised these constitutional powers in his own right, and not as a representative or surrogate of the Sovereign. It was further pointed out that the Governor-General’s statutory powers, that is, those powers conferred on him by legislation passed by the Commonwealth Parliament, were also conferred on the Governor-General in his own right and could be exercised by no one else—not even the Sovereign. And so by means of the Royal Powers Act 1953, Parliament empowered the Queen, when she was personally present in Australia, to exercise any power under an Act of Parliament that was exercisable by the Governor-General. The Act further provided that the Governor‑General could continue to exercise any of his statutory powers, even while the Queen was in Australia, and in practice governors-general have continued to do so. The Royal Powers Act has enabled the Queen to preside at three meetings of the Federal Executive Council at Government House, Canberra. She has also opened Parliament on three occasions, and held a Privy Council on five occasions. The Queen has also issued two assignments of powers to the Governor-General under section 2 of the Constitution, acting on each occasion with the advice of the Federal Executive Council. These documents were countersigned by her Australian Prime Minister—Menzies in 1954 and Whitlam in 1973—and they were sealed with the Royal Great Seal of Australia.[3]

I'd like Mies' comments on the wording, otherwise he'll cheerfully revert anything that suggests that the Queen is not omnipotent. --Pete (talk) 03:57, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Smith says it crystal clearly here:
  • The fact is that The Queen cannot exercise any of the Governor-General's constitutional powers. Under the Royal Powers Act 1953 The Queen is authorised, whenever she is present in Australia, to exercise the powers conferred on the Governor-General by Commonwealth Acts of Parliament, but they do not include the powers conferred on the Governor-General by the Constitution.
I know David Smith is not the sole source of knowledge on this matter, but he's the one who dominates google searches. -- Jack of Oz [Talk] 04:43, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
And here is Bob Menzies's 2nd Reading Speech from 2 December 1953 in which he says, inter alia:
  • However, I am advised that, notwithstanding section 61 of the Constitution, Her Majesty cannot, as a matter of strict law, exercise any power conferred on the Executive by a statute of the Parliament. In other words, she can exercise a prerogative right but not a statutory right as the law now stands. This bill therefore provides that any power under a statute which is exercisable by the Governor-General may be exercised by Her Majesty the Queen when she is personally in Australia.
(my bolding). The Constitution is not a statute of the Parliament. At least not the Australian Parliament. -- Jack of Oz [Talk] 04:56, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]


JackofOz, you'll have to forgive me, as I am not all that familiar with Australian constitutional studies. However, my academic studies are largely centred around Canada's constitutional framework.

My basic premise: all of the powers of the governor general are derived from the Queen.

While the governor general is explicitly named within the constitution, it is as the Queen's representative. In Canada, "Through the Letters Patent, King George VI allowed the Governor General to exercise all the power of the monarch with respect to Canada, significant because the Letters Patent cannot be altered or repealed by parliament since they are a creation of the monarch’s royal prerogative." Therefore, the governor general was unable to exercise the monarch's powers without these letters patent (where originally a different set were issued by the sovereign to each governor general individually), and it is through these letters that the office of the GG derives its authority. The Canadian Government website on the Crown for example, states that "In 1947, "Letters Patent Constituting the Office of the Governor General of Canada" (under King George VI), authorized the Governor General to exercise most of the Crown's powers on behalf of the Sovereign." The late Senator Eugene Forsey, stated in his book How Canadians Govern Themselves that "All of the powers of the Queen are now exercised by her representative, the Governor General, except when the Queen is in Canada.". Ronald Cheffins states in his article "The Royal Prerogative and the Office of Lieutenant Governor" in the Canadian Parliamentary Review that "In the 'Letters Patent of 1947', the then monarch King George VI, delegated to the Governor General the entire prerogative powers of the Crown at the federal level. These powers are of vital importance in the Canadian constitutional system, as they include such important matters as:

  • the appointment of the prime minister and cabinet ministers;
  • the appointment of ambassadors;
  • the summoning, proroguing, and dissolution of parliament;
  • the declaration of war, and
  • the signing of treaties"

So as you can see, the above powers cannot be legislated exclusively to the governor general, since they are "the creation of the monarch's royal prerogative". That being said, there are some people, such as James Mallory, who suggest otherwise. In The Structure of Canadian Government he states that "the Queen cannot exercise the Governor General’s powers because they are conferred on him, and not on the Queen, by the British North America Act." It is not entirely clear how Mallory arrived at such a conclusion however, besides perhaps through a claim to a 'constitutional convention' (although this position would be debatable), which are not legally binding in any event. His own interpretation of the BNA Act conflicts with many other prominent constitutional scholars (a couple as above); which is to say that from an historical and evolutionary perspective, the office of the governor general clearly serves a solely 'representative function' within the Canadian constitutional framework, and lacks any power in and of itself. It could be argued that since the BNA act mentions the GG, that it bestows upon the office a certain amount of legitimacy in and of itself, however one should keep in mind the intent and historical mindset of the original drafters (where it would be inconceivable for a governor to act independently of the sovereign). Trackratte (talk) 20:24, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Both the Australian and Canadian constitutions vest all executive authroity in the monarch and both ascribe certain of those executive powers for exercise only by the governor general; if the constitution says "The Governor General may from Time to Time, by Instrument under the Great Seal of Canada, appoint a Senator to be Speaker of the Senate", then the Queen cannot perform that task, though the power the governor-general exercises when doing so is the Queen's, not the viceroy's. The Australian governor-general is, however, specifically tasked by Australia's constitution to carry out more of those responsibilities than is the Canadian counterpart. If I understand things correctly, the only reserve powers the Queen holds in relation to Australia (in the Commonwealth jurisdiction, anyway) are refusing her prime minister's advice to appoint or dismiss a governor-general, refusing Royal Assent to a bill that has been reserved for her consideration, and denying any ministerial advice relating to honours. --Ħ MIESIANIACAL 21:09, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The crucial difference is that in Australia the office of Governor-General is created in the Constitution and therefore cannot be meddled with by the monarch in any way, as the only way that the Constitution can be amended is through referendum. The Governor-General's powers are not derived through the monarch - they are given through the Constitution. I present the pertinent remarks of a more recent Chief Justice of the High Court, Sir Gerard Brennan. In talking about the pathway to a formal republican method of government for Australia, he touches upon the reserve powers of the Governor-General:

…the law would have to discriminate among the powers presently exercised by the Governor- General. These powers fall into three classes: first, the executive power of the Commonwealth which s 61 vests in the Queen to be exercised by the Governor-General; second, powers vested in the Governor-General in Council; and third, powers simply vested in the Governor-General. Convention requires that all these powers are exercised only on the appropriate governmental advice but, exceptionally, the powers vested simply in the Governor-General may be exercised without or even contrary to ministerial advice in particular circumstances and then the powers are known, somewhat loosely, as the reserve powers. Australians became familiar with the term when Prime Minister Whitlam was dismissed by the Governor- General on 11 November 1975.[4]

Brennan is talking here of the various powers in ss5, 57, 58 and 64, of which the latter was exercised in 1975 by Sir John Kerr. He notes that these powers are not the s61 executive power vested in the Queen, but "powers simply vested in the Governor-General". An interesting footnote is worth quoting here.

Professor Winterton accepted that, at least since 1926, s 61 should be read as “exercisable only by the Governor-General”: see Parliament, the Executive and the Governor-General (Melbourne, MUP, 1983) p 51.

Mies holds the notion that the Queen owns the powers given in the Constitution, and may exercise them if she wishes, for example to dismiss a government. This is very much a fringe view, and we should not present it as anything but that. --Pete (talk) 21:39, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Not even that. The views of individual WP editors don't get to be enshrined in WP articles. It's all about what reliable sources have to say, and no WP editor per se, not even Jimmy Wales, is a reliable source. -- Jack of Oz [Talk] 21:44, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. And the constitution is clear that executive power is the Queen's but much of it can only be exercised by the governor-general. In other words, I believe the present wording of the article relating to the Royal Powers Act is incorrect. In fact, I don't even know what the Royal Powers Act has to do with the reserve powers. --Ħ MIESIANIACAL 22:09, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The point here is that individual interpretations of primary sources have no place here. Try to find a reliable source, please. --Pete (talk) 22:13, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I totally agree with you, Miesianical. That was precisely why I started this thread. Reserve powers, whatever one might say about them, have to do with either the Constitution or come from somewhere else in the mists of Westminster history. They have zero to do with the Royal Powers Act 1953 or any other law the Australian Parliament has ever passed or will ever pass, and that link should never have been made in the article. -- Jack of Oz [Talk] 22:19, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, talk about the mists of time: The Royal Powers Act seems to have been in there from the beginning. I think mention of it should be removed. --Ħ MIESIANIACAL 22:23, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That's what I've been saying. -- Jack of Oz [Talk] 22:32, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"Tabled", with apologies to Correct British usage.

Since this article will be read by americans in addition to other English speakers, I changed the work "tabled" to "introduced." The word "tabled" is actually more proper in context, but in american usage, to "table" a bill is to kill it. I feel it is better to use the unambiguous "introduce" in place of the correct term in this case. See WP:VNE -Arch dude (talk) 03:12, 11 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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