The crown. Hey, if you want to join this community... make sure you subscribe to our channel because every week I'll upload new videos about Australian law generally.
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As I said, today we'll be talking about the crown. And although I do like the TV series, I'm actually referring to the crown. or at least the four senses in which we can use the expression the crown in law.
So let's look at all of them. Let's start with the first sense. The first sense actually we can just skip through because the meaning is the jury that you can put on your head.
So nothing really related to law here, let's just move to the second sense. The second sense relates to the monarch or to the institution of the monarchy. Instead of referring to the queen or the king we refer to the crown we can see the use of this term the crown in this sense in the preamble to the Australian Constitution if you are new to our channel make sure to watch this video as well there I explain everything that you need to know about the preamble it is with the use of the crown in the third sense however that things start to get interesting because in this sense the crown means the state So here, when we say the crown, we actually mean society at large, the whole apparatus of the political community, the three branches of power.
This happens because for a long time, the British monarchs ruled sovereign over all the institutions of the state. The judiciary, because the courts belonged to the monarch, and the monarch's decisions were judicial decisions. Parliament as well, because the monarch was the one that was legislating. and also the executive because the monarch was the one that was executing and applying the laws. So for a long time instead of using the state, the crown implied this personification of the institutions and powers of the state.
In a sense the use of the crown in the preamble to the Australian constitution also encompasses this because this demonstrated the powers that the monarch queen had. to enact the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act. Now, today, when we use the term the Crown in Australia, we use it primarily in the fourth sense.
And in this sense, the Crown means the Executive. Yes, that's right. A synonym to the Executive is the Crown.
In the text of the Australian Constitution, we can see an example of that in section 44. where we deal with the disqualification of members of parliament. There, there is a restriction on the election of certain members of parliament if they hold an office of profit under the crown. What it means is under the executive, if they have an office in the public service. In the commentary to this section, for example, Quick and Guerin, they use the expression servants of the crown instead of employers of the executive. or of the public service.
So generally today when we mean the crown we're usually referring to the executive. But there's yet another usage that is common particularly in commentaries, articles or sometimes in the judicial decisions as well. It's the expression the crown in right of the commonwealth or the crown in right of the states. But these expressions they are still within the fourth sense.
And so they mean the executive of the Commonwealth or the executive of the states. As I said, most of the times if someone is mentioning the crown, they are actually talking about the government or particularly the executive. Thank you for watching this video.
It was just this very short explanation about the usage of the term the crown. Again, if you haven't subscribed to our channel, do it. Like this video, subscribe to our channel and hit the bell sign.
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