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Concept
The Crown
Summary
The Crown is the state in all its aspects within the jurisprudence of the Commonwealth realms and their subdivisions (such as the Crown Dependencies, overseas territories, provinces, or states). The term can be used to refer to the office of the monarch or the monarchy as institutions, to the rule of law, or to the functions of executive (the crown-in-council), legislative (the crown-in-parliament), and judicial (the crown on the bench) governance and the civil service.
The concept of the crown as a corporation sole developed first in 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 and is now rooted in the legal lexicon of all 15 Commonwealth realms, their various dependencies, and states in free association with them. It is not to be confused with any physical crown, such as those of the British regalia.
The term is also found in various expressions such as crown land, which some countries refer to as public land or state land; as well as in some offices, such as minister of the crown, crown attorney, and crown prosecutor.
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 is "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." The Lord Simon of Glaisdale stated, "the crown is a piece of bejewelled headgear under guard at the Tower of London; but, one that symbolises the powers of government, which were formerly wielded by the wearer of the crown".
Official source
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