Definition
A Law French phrase meaning "thus it is willed" or "so he wills it." In British constitutional practice, *ainsi le veut* is the operative clause in the formal formula of royal assent to a bill of supply — that is, to legislation granting money or taxation to the Crown. The full formula in which the phrase appears runs: *Le roy remercie ses bons sujets, accepte leur benevolence, et ainsi le veut* ("The king thanks his loyal subjects, accepts their benevolence, and thus wills it to be so"). The phrase signals the sovereign's acceptance of a money bill passed by Parliament and is the point at which such a bill becomes law.
The formula has a companion expression used when the Crown declines to assent: *Le roi s'avisera* ("The king will consider of it"), which functions as a soft but effective veto. The contrast between the two phrases defines a significant constitutional boundary: acceptance versus deferral, supply granted versus supply withheld.
Common Confusion
*Ainsi le veut* should not be confused with the more general royal assent formula *Le roy le veult* ("The king wills it"), which is the standard assent language for public bills other than supply. The supply formula is specifically tailored to acknowledge Parliament's grant to the Crown — the language of "accepts their benevolence" reflects the constitutional fiction that taxation is a gift from subjects rather than a compelled levy. Researchers conflating the two formulas may misread the nature of the bill being assented to.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in British constitutional history, parliamentary procedure, or the history of royal prerogative will encounter this phrase almost exclusively in historical sources. It has no operative use in modern American law and appears in American legal dictionaries primarily because Law French permeated early Anglo-American legal training through sources like Blackstone and the Year Books.
The phrase is a useful index term when tracing the history of the appropriations power and the constitutional principle that money bills originate with the legislature rather than the Crown. In British sources from the medieval and early modern periods, the precise formula used at royal assent can help date and characterize the nature of a piece of legislation.
The companion phrase *le roi s'avisera* is historically notable: the last time a British monarch actually withheld royal assent using this formula was Queen Anne in 1707 (the Scottish Militia Bill). Researchers should be aware that post-1707, royal assent became a formality, and citations to the denial formula in later sources are theoretical rather than descriptive of active practice.
American researchers may encounter this phrase in treatises on parliamentary law, colonial legislative history, or in works addressing the origins of the Appropriations Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The structural echo — that supply originates with the representative body, not the executive — runs directly from British supply practice into American constitutional design, and *ainsi le veut* sits at the procedural heart of that tradition.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje and Lawrence provide the most complete English-language legal dictionary treatment of this phrase, giving the full royal assent formula and pairing it with *le roi s'avisera* as its functional opposite. Their entry captures the essential constitutional mechanics: the king thanks, accepts, and wills — three distinct acts embedded in a single ceremonial phrase.
What historical dictionaries generally omit is the broader significance of the supply/non-supply distinction. The formula is not merely ceremonial window dressing but encodes a constitutional settlement about the relationship between Crown and Parliament over money. Rapalje and Lawrence record the phrase accurately but do not develop this dimension, treating it as a curiosity of parliamentary form rather than a node in the history of representative government.
No significant divergence exists among the historical dictionaries that treat this term — the phrase is technical enough that variation is minimal. The interpretive gap is one of depth, not disagreement.
Jurisdictional Note
This phrase has no application in American or civilian legal systems. It is exclusively a term of British parliamentary practice, relevant in American legal research only through the historical reception of English constitutional law and parliamentary procedure.