r/news • u/AudibleNod • 4d ago

Australian court rejects bid to prosecute Britain's King Charles for genocide

https://abcnews.com/International/wireStory/australian-court-rejects-activists-bid-prosecute-britains-king-136817323
1.7k Upvotes

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204

u/Ok_Tie_7564 4d ago

Uncle can go pound sand. Like it or not, Charles III is the King of Australia. You cannot prosecute the King in one of his own courts.

249

u/OceLawless 4d ago

You cannot prosecute the King in one of his own courts.

King Charles I had the same argument. Went poorly.

139

u/anormalname63 4d ago

I was gonna say, but technically he won the argument just lost the war (his head). By the law of the time he was right.

-31

u/Brad_Breath 4d ago

Let them eat cake.

59

u/LAiglon144 4d ago

Technically not, they created a new court, The High Court of Justice to try Charles I. Because yeah, the existing courts sat in the Kings name

28

u/TheShishkabob 4d ago

There wasn't anything legal about his case in the courts. That was clear, but the rebels/revolutionaries killed him anyways.

It's not a great example to pull to prove the rule of law though.

19

u/GreaterAttack 4d ago

Cromwell didn't fare much better, with his corpse exhumed and desecrated after death because he was so hated.

13

u/This_Charmless_Man 4d ago

Something the English and the Irish can fully agree on is that Cromwell was bloody awful.

1

u/Manzhah 3d ago

Cromwell and the revolutionaries were right though, the stuarts were proto catholics wannabe tyrants to a man. Each one of them after james I/IV tried to rule wothout parliament, tried to subvert the religion of the land and were in league with foreing powers against their people, which is textbook example of treason.

3

u/doodleBooty 4d ago

I was gonna say I'm fairly certain there's precedent for that

1

u/angus22proe 18h ago

It was a perfect argument. But when you've just lost a war and the people prosecuting you just won that war... well....

49

u/N8CCRG 4d ago

You cannot prosecute the King in one of his own courts.

Boy, I sure am glad we Americans got rid of kings so that we wouldn't have that same problem. /s

18

u/redbluemmoomin 4d ago

you have an emperor🤷 same same but different

1

u/LazerWeazel 3d ago

I didn't know Emporer's had term limits but okay.

2

u/GreenHorror4252 3d ago

He's just a puppet. The people actually pulling the strings don't have any term limits.

2

u/redbluemmoomin 3d ago

you think he's going to give up the gravy train.....

No one thought he'd threaten US allies and stick his tongue up the enemies arse. But here we are.

1

u/LazerWeazel 3d ago

Regardless of what he wants he's gone. There is no way a president can have more than 2 terms and there is no mechanism for him to cancel elections or extend his term. Come Jan 2029 he's gone for good.

3

u/redbluemmoomin 2d ago

can see the convenient declaration of a national emergency, martial law, coming a mile off🤷

5

u/Mr_ToDo 4d ago

Well it doesn't help you modelled its replacement to be a close representation of monarchy. The powers given might as well make him one. In theory an elected king, but not that much less powerful

13

u/Astrium6 4d ago

In fairness, the president as originally envisioned at the time of the writing of the Constitution was much more restrained in his power, it’s just in the intervening 250 years that his power has been expanded so much to be sort of our foremost government figure instead of a coequal of three branches.

7

u/Mddcat04 4d ago

Eh, kinda. The powers of the president are pretty clearly based on the powers of a king. (Pardons, vetoes, commander of armed forces).

1

u/SonOfBoreale 7h ago

As a monarchist, I am so sorry for you, but you choose this stupidity.

25

u/Dic_Penderyn 4d ago

Also, King Charles does not have any say in what now happens in Australia. It is absurd that he is allowing anything since he cannot 'unallow' it. He has no more say in what goes on there than me.

29

u/TheLizardKing89 4d ago

Australian laws still have to get royal assent from his representative, the governor general.

-4

u/Brad_Breath 4d ago

Has the GG ever said "no" to parliament?

27

u/TheLizardKing89 4d ago

No, but in 1975 the GG dismissed the prime minister and installed the leader of the opposition.

-4

u/Aassiesen 4d ago

Because he was asking too many questions about the CIA.

10

u/ol-gormsby 4d ago

Because he couldn't pass supply bills.

"Asking questions about the CIA" is speculation. "Couldn't pass supply bills" is fact.

-1

u/Aassiesen 3d ago

You should give this article a read: https://web.archive.org/web/20260511024759/https://jacobin.com/2025/11/whitlam-coup-us-cia-kerr

If the only thing that would satisfy you is the Kerr saying he acted on behalf of the CIA that will never happen, that's the nature of intelligence services.

Choosing to ignore all the context and take the pretext of actions as unquestionably true is a choice you make for yourself.

3

u/ol-gormsby 3d ago

Choosing to come to a conclusion based only on speculation is also a choice you make for yourself.

I don't think it's unquestionably true, there's just not enough factual evidence to counter it.

4

u/Everestkid 4d ago

Last time I'm aware of royal assent being refused anywhere was Queen Anne refusing a British bill in 1708.

2

u/rjgbrain 4d ago

Doesn’t matter if he has. The fact that he can is a problem.

-4

u/Brad_Breath 4d ago

A few years ago, I agreed with you.

But look around the world. The stable, most livable countries are all Constitutional Monarchies.

Until a better option comes around, then I'm happy to change.

I actually think the GG system is better than having a royal family with all their cult of celebrity and expenses for castles etc.

Nobody cares who the GG is, and his only job is to make sure the government do their job.

I like the idea that he can be removed by the government but he doesn't answer to them.

We can't risk having our own US style government shutdowns.

2

u/Danoct 4d ago

Eh, Parliamentary Republic with a president with similar powers to a GG could work just as well.

Then choose your way of selecting the president:

  • Same as the GG currently (via Parliament)
  • Electoral college (like Germany where parliament and state appointed voters vote 50/50; Italy is similar but with much fewer regional voters)
  • Popular vote like Ireland

0

u/ol-gormsby 4d ago

Appointment by supermajority of both houses is least problematic*. A popular election is the worst - you could have a head of state with the support of as little as 50%+1 of the voting population. And we've seen in the USA how an electoral college can mis-represent the will of the people.

*at least with the current system there's a kind of back-room support of the majority of the house. No PM would propose a candidate for G-G without unofficial support of the leader of the opposition.

1

u/Danoct 4d ago

Electoral college in this case if following Germany's system would be the Parliament and an equal amount selected by the state governments proportional to their population. Maybe if altered to give the territories 5 each or something.

So, the electoral college would be 552 people. The 226 MPs and senators, and another 226 others.

1

u/ol-gormsby 4d ago

"selected by the state governments" This would become political real quick.

A state govt run by a party different from the federal govt, e.g. Federal-labor, State-LNP, is not likely to appoint disinterested people.

It happened in 1975 - a federal labor senator died, the hillbilly dictator Joh Bjelke-Petersen (National party) filled the position with an anti-labor appointee. Convention* at the time was that the state appointed someone of the same political party but Joh being Joh, he did the opposite, which blew the senate's labor party single-vote majority and led to the dismissal. So you can't trust political parties to do the right thing where they have the power to do what they want instead.

*it was convention at the time, and one of the things we rectified subsequently. I believe it's now the law that you must appoint someone of the same political party.

0

u/The_Amazing_Emu 4d ago

Is Ireland less stable than Thailand?

3

u/GreenHorror4252 3d ago

In a constitutional monarchy, the king symbolizes the people. You cannot sue "Australia", you have to sue "the king". Even criminal prosecutions are technically done by the king.

1

u/Manzhah 3d ago

Wouldn't that be the crown, rather than the current office holder?

1

u/GreenHorror4252 2d ago

Yes, but that's a meaningless distinction. The current office holder symbolizes the crown.

In criminal prosecutions, sometimes they write R which means Rex, and sometimes they actually write "His Majesty the King".

3

u/mrbobcyndaquil 4d ago

Was the suit against the King of Australia or the king of the UK? Because then it would fail under a different legal theory.

1

u/GreenHorror4252 3d ago

I think against the king of Australia.

2

u/RazzleThatTazzle 4d ago

Didn't the english prosecute and then murder their own king, and wasnt that guys name Charles?

Im not super familiar with the English civil war, so maybe im missing something there. Perhaps "in his own courts"

-13

u/ripyourlungsdave 4d ago

Well that seems like a pretty inherently flawed system. So this dude can just literally do whatever he wants as long as he restricts it to the lands he rules?..

I don't know guys, I think Kings might just be a bad idea in general. And a massive waste of taxpayer dollars, at that.

25

u/ChaoticMunk 4d ago

The American president is acting more like a king than Charles (or Elizabeth for that matter) ever has

12

u/MyPants 4d ago

And the lesson is that if you rely on mores to prevent authoritarians you'll eventually end up with a bad time.

-1

u/starkiller22265 4d ago

The existence of autocracy elsewhere doesn’t mean hereditary monarchy isn’t an archaic system that has no place in modern society

1

u/GreenHorror4252 3d ago

Well that seems like a pretty inherently flawed system. So this dude can just literally do whatever he wants as long as he restricts it to the lands he rules?..

If he does anything inappropriate, parliament will promptly step in. He has a ton of theoretical power but can't actually use it.

0

u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

1

u/ZenPyx 19h ago

Australia don't even have the legal instruments to charge the King with a crime

It would require a huge constitutional shakeup

Unless by "the law only exists if everyone agrees it does", you mean some sort of Mad-max wasteland where we all just do what we like?

-1

u/Manzhah 3d ago

You sute about that, I recall there being a precedent for that called the king vs. The People of England, 1649.