The Crown is a political concept used in Commonwealth realms, analogous to the concept of the government in legal systems influenced by Roman civil law.
English common law never developed a concept of the state and left supreme executive power with the monarch. The concept of the Crown as a corporation sole developed in the Kingdom of England as a separation of the physical crown and property of the kingdom from the person and personal property of the monarch. It spread through English and later British colonisation, becoming embedded in the legal lexicon of the British dominions. As the dominions gained control over the royal prerogative in the 1930s, the concept evolved such that 'the Crown in right of' each realm and territory acts independently of the other realms and territories.
Depending on the context, it may refer to the entirety of the state or country, the executive government specifically (either of a realm or one of its provinces, states or territories) or only to the monarch and their direct representatives. The Crown as a political concept should not be confused with physical crowns, such as those of the British regalia.
Definition
The term the Crown does not have a single definition. Legal scholars Maurice Sunkin and Sebastian Payne opined, "the nature of the Crown has been taken for granted, in part because it is fundamental and, in part, because many academics have no idea what the term the Crown amounts to". Nicholas Browne-Wilkinson theorised that the Crown is "an amorphous, abstract concept" and, thus, "impossible to define", while William Wade stated the Crown "means simply the Queen".
Warren J. Newman described the Crown as "a useful and convenient means of conveying, in a word, the compendious formal, executive and administrative powers and apparatus attendant upon the modern constitutional and monarchical state."
Lord Simon of Glaisdale stated:.
Lord Diplock suggested the Crown means "the government [and] all of the ministers and parliamentary secretaries under whose direction the administrative work of the government is carried out by the civil servants employed in the various government departments." This interpretation was supported by section 8 of the Pensions (Colonial Service) Act 1887 (50 & 51 Vict. c. 13), which set the terms "permanent civil service of the state", "permanent civil service of Her Majesty" and "permanent civil service of the Crown" as having the same meaning.
In each Commonwealth realm, the term the Crown, at its broadest, means the government or the polity known as the state, while the sovereign in all realms is the living embodiment of the state, or symbolic personification of the Crown. The body of the reigning sovereign thus holds two distinct personas in constant coexistence, an ancient theory of the "King's two bodies"—the body natural (subject to infirmity and death) and the body politic (which never dies). The Crown and the sovereign are "conceptually divisible but legally indivisible [...] The office cannot exist without the office-holder". This theory is the basis of the immediate succession of the new British monarch upon the death of his or her predecessor; whilst the body natural may have passed, the body politic lives on.
The terms the Crown, the Crown in Right of [jurisdiction], His Majesty the King in Right of [jurisdiction], and similar, are all synonymous and the monarch's legal personality is sometimes referred to simply as the relevant jurisdiction's name. In countries using systems of government derived from Roman civil law, the state is the equivalent concept. However, the terms the sovereign or monarch and the Crown, though related, have different meanings: the Crown includes both the monarch and the government.
The Crown also represents the legal embodiment of executive, legislative, and judicial governance. While the Crown's legal personality is usually regarded as a corporation sole, it can, at least for some purposes, be described as a corporation aggregate headed by the monarch. Frederic William Maitland argued the Crown is a corporation aggregate embracing the government and the "whole political community". J.G. Allen preferred to view the Crown as a corporation sole; one office occupied by a single person, enduring "through generations of incumbents and, historically, lends coherence to a network of other institutions of a similar nature." Canadian academic Philippe Lagassé found the crown "acts in various capacities, as such: crown-in-council (executive); crown-in-parliament (legislative); crown-in-court (judicial). It is also an artificial person and office as a corporation sole. At its most basic, 'the Crown' is, in the UK and other Commonwealth realms, what in most other countries is 'the state'."
History
The concept of the Crown took form under the feudal system. Though not used this way in all countries that had this system, in England, all rights and privileges were ultimately bestowed by the ruler. Land, for instance, was granted by the Crown to lords in exchange for feudal services and they, in turn, granted the land to lesser lords. One exception to this was common socage: owners of land held as socage held it subject only to the crown. When such lands become ownerless, they are said to escheat; i.e. return to direct ownership of the Crown (Crown land). is the royal prerogative by which unowned property, primarily unclaimed inheritances, becomes the property of the Crown.
As such, the physical crown and the property belonging to successive monarchs in perpetuity came to be separated from the person of the monarch and his or her private property. After several centuries of the monarch personally exercising supreme legislative, executive, and judicial power, these functions decreased as parliaments, ministries, and courts grew through the 13th century. The term the Crown then developed into a means by which to differentiate the monarch's official functions from his personal choices and actions. Even within medieval England, there was the doctrine of capacities separating the person of the king from his actions in the capacity of monarch.
The Crown was first defined as an 'imperial' crown during the reign of Henry VIII in the Ecclesiastical Appeals Act 1532 which declared that 'this realm of England is an empire... governed by one Supreme Head and King having the dignity and royal estate of the imperial Crown of the same'. In William Blackstone's 1765 Commentaries on the Laws of England, he explained that "the meaning therefore of the legislature, when it uses these terms of empire and imperial, and applies them to the realm and crown of England, is only to assert that our king is equally sovereign and independent within these his dominions, as any emperor is in his empire; and owes no kind of subjection to any other potentate on earth."
When the Kingdom of England merged with those of Scotland and Ireland, the concept extended into the legal lexicons of the United Kingdom and its dependencies and overseas territories and, eventually, all of the independent Commonwealth realms.
Functions Executive government
The institution and powers of the Crown are formally vested in the king, but, conventionally, its functions are exercised in the sovereign's name by ministers of the Crown drawn from and responsible to the elected chamber of parliament.
The king or queen is the employer of all government officials and staff (including the viceroys, judges, members of the armed forces, police officers, and parliamentarians), the guardian of foster children (Crown wards), as well as the owner of all Crown land (public land or state land in other countries), buildings and equipment (Crown property), state-owned companies (Crown corporations or Crown entities), and the copyright for government publications (Crown copyright). This is all in his or her position as sovereign, not as an individual; all such property is held by the Crown in perpetuity and cannot be sold by the sovereign without the proper advice and consent of his or her relevant ministers. Should the monarch abdicate, all such property would remain with the Crown and come under the ownership of their successor.
Legislative
The concept of the Crown as a part of parliament is related to the idea of the fusion of powers, meaning that the executive branch and legislative branch of government are fused together. This is a key concept of the Westminster system of government, developed in England and used in countries in the Commonwealth of Nations and beyond. It is in contradistinction to the idea of the separation of powers.
In Commonwealth realms that are federations, the concept of the King in parliament applies within that specific parliament only, as each sub-national parliament is considered separate and distinct from each other and from the federal parliaments (such as Australian states or the Canadian provinces).
Justice
The King is the 'fountain of justice'. In criminal proceedings, the Crown is the prosecuting party (led by a Crown prosecutor, or Crown attorney in parts of Canada); the case is usually designated (in case citation) as R v [defendant], where R can stand for either rex (if the current monarch is male) or regina (if the monarch is female), and the v stands for versus. For example, a criminal case against Smith might be referred to as R v Smith and verbally read as "the Crown against Smith".
The Crown is, in general, immune to prosecution and civil lawsuits. So, R is rarely (albeit sometimes) seen on the right hand side of the 'v' in the first instance. To pursue a case against alleged unlawful activity by the government, a case in judicial review is brought by the Crown against a minister of the Crown on the application of a claimant. The titles of these cases now follow the pattern of R (on the application of [X]) v [Y], notated as R ([X]) v [Y], for short. Thus, R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union is R (on the application of Miller and other) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, where "Miller" is Gina Miller, a citizen. Until the end of the 20th century, such case titles used the pattern R v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, ex parte Miller. Either form may be abbreviated R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union.
In Scotland, criminal prosecutions are undertaken by the Lord Advocate (or the relevant procurator fiscal) in the name of the Crown. Accordingly, the abbreviation HMA is used in the High Court of Justiciary for His/Her Majesty's Advocate, in place of rex or regina; as in, HMA v Al Megrahi and Fahima.
Most jurisdictions in Australia use R or The King (or The Queen) in criminal cases. If the Crown is the respondent to an appeal, the words The King will be spelled out, instead of using the abbreviation R (i.e. the case name at trial would be R v Smith; if the defendant appeals against the Crown, the case name would be Smith v The King). In Western Australia and Tasmania, prosecutions will be brought in the name of the respective state instead of the Crown (e.g. The State of Western Australia v Smith). Victorian trials in the original jurisdiction will be brought in the name of the director of public prosecutions. The Commonwealth director of public prosecutions may choose which name to bring the proceeding in. Judges usually refer to the prosecuting party as simply "the prosecution" in the text of judgments. In civil cases where the Crown is a party, it is a customary to list the body politic (e.g. State of Queensland or Commonwealth of Australia) or the appropriate government minister as the party, instead. When a case is announced in court, the clerk or bailiff may refer to the Crown orally as our sovereign lord the king (or our sovereign lady the queen).