As the current monarch of the United Kingdom,
Canada, Australia and a bunch of other countries that have her on their money, the Queen enjoys
something known as sovereign immunity. In a nutshell, sovereign, or crown immunity
as it is sometimes known, means that the Queen is for all intents and purposes above the
law. So does this mean that the Queen could just
up and kill somebody if she felt like it, all the while getting off scot free? In theory, yes, absolutely. It turns out the queen can commit any crime
just about anywhere in the world and get away with it legally thanks to the fact that she
enjoys both sovereign immunity and diplomatic immunity. As we’ve discussed in our article on whether
diplomats can really get away with murder, diplomatic immunity is so exceptionally far
reaching in its scope that a person protected by it could indeed go all Lethal Weapon 2
on everyone with total impunity. The one problem for those diplomats, however,
is that their home nations would in all likelihood not take kindly to them doing so and, beyond
recalling them, they’d likely face prosecution at home for these acts if they were serious
enough crimes. (Although, as we discussed in that piece,
minor crimes like flouting any and all traffic rules and racking up many thousands of dollars
in parking tickets without bothering to ever pay tends to be seemingly every nations’
diplomats favorite passtime.) Going back to the queen, however, unlike most
with diplomatic immunity, she does not technically have to worry about what anyone in the UK
thinks. You see, part of her immunity stems from the
fact that all justice in the United Kingdom and various other countries she rules is meted
out in her name. Now, obviously the Queen doesn’t personally
dispense justice like the Kings and Queens of yore, among other reasons because doing
so would be impractical. As a result of this, whilst the Queen is considered
the “fount of justice” for her subjects, the ability to administer it is doled out
to judges across Britain- all of whom are granted the post-nominal of QC (standing for
Queen’s Counsel) as a nod to their position as an extension of the Queen’s will. Likewise, the Crown Court similarly dispenses
justice in the Queen’s name and as a result, all cases brought before it are tried as The
Crown Versus *Blank*. Unsurprisingly from this, it is not technically
possible for the Queen herself to be tried before the Crown Court as it would involve
her prosecuting, well, herself. Looking more deeply, her sovereign immunity
also makes it so that the Queen cannot be tried in civil proceedings either, meaning
she cannot be sued or have other such civil proceedings brought against her. The Queen also cannot be forced to testify
in open court or even be interviewed by the police, not that this matters seeing as she
also can’t be arrested. And even if she could be legally arrested
for a crime, it wouldn’t matter anyway. You see, technically no arrest can be made
“in the monarch’s presence” without her consent. Thus, arresting her is impossible on this
count too because it would most definitely have to happen in her presence. In addition, as if it being impossible to
arrest someone just standing near the Queen, let alone the Queen herself, this protection
extends to her various palaces too, meaning the police can’t arrest anyone, including
the Queen, in any place she currently inhabits unless she gives assent. It’s perhaps also worth mentioning that
all prisoners in the United Kingdom are held “at her Majesty’s leisure” (which is
why the Queen can pardon criminals if she so wills it), meaning she could just walk
out of prison anyway by telling everyone to let her go. Speaking of the police, as with the justice
system, they too are charged with dispensing justice in the Queen’s name and all members
of British law enforcement, upon joining the force, must swear an oath that reads, in part
– “I will well and truly serve the Queen in the office of constable.” Or to put it another way, the Queen is the
absolute authority of the entire UK policing system and her word is, quite literally, law. As a result, the Queen could theoretically
shut down any attempt made to arrest her by simply telling the officer to go away. Now you might say if she did all this, surely
Parliament would step in and curtail the murderous Queen’s powers to ensure she could be prosecuted. The problem is that all laws proposed by Parliament
require what is known as Royal Assent before they can be enshrined into British law. As the name suggests, Royal Assent comes directly
from the Queen herself so a parliament looking to prosecute the Queen would need the Queen
to authorise the bill limiting her own powers, which she obviously would not do if she suddenly
decided to start treating life like a game of Grand Theft Auto. Another avenue that could be pursued in regards
to prosecuting the Queen would be to force her to abdicate, removing the many protections
she enjoys. To be clear though, this wouldn’t necessarily
open the Queen up to prosecution as, under British law, nothing she does as Queen can
be considered illegal- it’d just mean she could be prosecuted for any further crimes
she happened to commit after. It’s also worth noting here that the Queen
has the power to completely dissolve Parliament if she so chooses and cause a whole new set
of people to be elected. And if this group displeased her, she is free
to do it again and again. It’s also the Queen’s duty to appoint
the prime minister and she could, in theory, appoint anyone she wanted to the position,
regardless of the way the British public voted in any elections. So installing someone who would do what she
wanted would not be any real hurdle. Thus, it would take a literal revolution for
Parliament to rewrite the laws concerning the Queen without her consent. There’s a potential problem with this too,
though. You see, the Queen is the Commander-in-chief
of the British Armed Forces. As former professional head of the British
Armed forces, Lord Charles Guthrie once noted, “The armed forces are loyal, and we live
in a democracy, but actually their ultimate authority is the Queen.” Yes, like with the police, every member of
the Armed Forces in Britain swears an oath of fealty to the Queen and she is considered
the ultimate authority in regards to military matters. Thus, if there was an attempt at a Parliamentary
revolution and members of Parliament refused to step down as they were rewriting British
law without the Queen’s consent, she could simply order the British Armed Forces to forcibly
remove them from power or even line them all up and have them executed. The question then would be, in such a scenario,
would they honor their oaths to the Queen? Speaking of her power over the various groups
of highly trained armed forces, the Queen has a remarkable number of ways she could
theoretically kill someone if she felt so inclined, without need to get her own hands
bloody. For example, she could instruct a crack team
of SAS commandos to silently make a person disappear, tell her personal guard to charge
them with their bayonets, or ask the Red Arrows to crash into someone’s house. Again, whether the soldier, sailor or airmen
in question would honor their oaths and listen to the order is another matter entirely- but
the point is, if the Queen ever gave such an order there is no authority on Earth that
could legally override it save for herself. On top of that, if any investigation was every
put in place to see why these soldiers had gone on their murder spree, the Queen not
only could not be questioned in court, as previously mentioned, but also ignore the
matter entirely as, despite her prominent political position, she and everything to
do with her private life are exempt from any Freedom of Information requests. If the Queen felt particularly gung-ho she
could even personally declare war on any nation or person and, thanks to her Royal Prerogative,
need not consult anyone about it before hand. In fact, she could even authorise a nuclear
strike on a person anywhere in the world via Britain’s secretive and expansive network
of nuclear submarines, again thanks to the fact that all of the men and women stationed
aboard these vessels swear to put the Queen’s orders before all others. Now you might say a foreign power might get
pretty upset if that nuclear strike happened on their soil, and the International Criminal
Courts might also try to step in, but if they decided to tangle with this rather formidable
woman, the Queen could theoretically make her army larger by commandeering any ships
that entered British waters (another power of hers) and by commanding the various armies
of the commonwealth (all of whom swear a similar oath of fealty to the crown, same as the British
armed forces) to come to her aid- that’s a lot of nations and military might. Again, how many of these armies would listen,
particularly after she decided to go all Armageddon on the world, is irrelevant to the legal discussion
at hand- what matters is that the Queen technically has the ability to do all this and that nobody
could legally stop her. Despite the tremendous power she theoretically
wields and the fact that she enjoys a “unique legal status” as monarch making her totally
and unequivocally above the law, the Queen doesn’t utilise even an iota of her full
powers. Why? Well, mainly to keep in the good graces of
her subjects with it being noted by the official website of the British Monarchy that , “Although
civil and criminal proceedings cannot be taken against the Sovereign as a person under UK
law, The Queen is careful to ensure that all her activities in her personal capacity are
carried out in strict accordance with the law.” At the end of the day, she herself swore an
oath to her subjects, which she seems to have spent her many decades as Queen taking very
seriously. Specifically, in her speech at her 21st birthday,
she stated, “I declare before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short
shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all
belong.”
Her and most of her family have the blood of millions of innocent people on their hands.. So evidently yes
She could shoot someone in the middle of Piccadilly and not lose any bannermen.
I thought I knew that guy in the thumbnail......... from somewhere.....
Evidently, yes.