Definition
A French-language formula of royal veto, translating literally as "the king will deliberate on it." When the sovereign wished to withhold assent from a bill passed by the legislative assembly — effectively blocking it from becoming law without an outright rejection — the prescribed formula was *Le roi s'avisera* or its equivalent deliberative phrasing. The expression signified that the monarch was taking the matter under advisement, a parliamentary courtesy that functioned in practice as a veto.
The term belongs to the constitutional vocabulary of monarchical legislative procedure rather than to private law or common-law adjudication. It captures the formal language through which royal prerogative over legislation was exercised in assemblies operating under French legal and constitutional influence.
---
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): *Délibérer* (French) — to deliberate; to consider carefully before deciding; to debate among members of a group.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): *Deliberate* — to weigh in the mind; to consider the reasons for and against; to take counsel with oneself; to reflect.
The ordinary sense of the word points toward careful internal reasoning or group discussion — a process leading toward a decision. The legal-constitutional use of *deliberer* inverts this: the formula was not a genuine promise of future consideration but a terminal act, a polite but effective suspension of legislative will. Where ordinary usage implies eventual resolution, the royal formula implied indefinite deferral.
---
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in historical and comparative constitutional materials, not in common-law case reporters or modern statutory codes. Researchers will encounter it in:
- Treatises on monarchical constitutional procedure, particularly those dealing with French, British, or continental European legislative history
- Comparative constitutional scholarship examining the veto power across different governmental systems
- Historical analyses of the relationship between crown and assembly in ancien régime France and in colonial or post-revolutionary assemblies that inherited French procedural forms
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry is terse and somewhat misleading in its layout, running the *deliberer* definition directly into an unrelated entry (*Lea, or Ley*) without clear demarcation — a transcription hazard researchers should watch for in older dictionary formats. The embedded quotation from Montesquieu (*L'Esprit des Lois*, Book XXVII, Chapter 23 — noting that the actual locus of the *salus populi* maxim in Montesquieu is a point worth verifying against the primary text) signals the jurisprudential context: the tension between sovereign prerogative and popular welfare that animated Enlightenment constitutional debate.
Researchers working on the history of the veto power should distinguish this formula from the absolute veto and the suspensive veto as those concepts developed in British and American constitutional thought. The deliberative formula was, functionally, an absolute veto dressed in the language of deliberation.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence provide the core gloss: *Le roi s'avisera* — the king will deliberate — as the veto formula used when the crown intended to block legislation. The entry is one of the shorter glosses in the dictionary and offers no procedural elaboration or jurisdictional context beyond the general monarchical setting. It does not distinguish between the absolute veto and the suspensive veto, nor does it trace the formula's use across specific constitutional moments.
What the entry does usefully preserve is the pairing of this royal formula with the Montesquieu maxim *Le salut du peuple est la suprême loi* — "the safety of the people is the supreme law." This juxtaposition is editorially suggestive: the dictionary implicitly places royal deliberative power in tension with the principle that sovereign authority is bounded by public welfare. Whether that pairing was intentional or merely an artifact of alphabetical proximity is unclear, but it reflects the broader jurisprudential conversation in which this vocabulary was embedded.
No other sources in the Law Mind shelf address this term directly.
---
Jurisdictional Note
The formula belongs to constitutional systems operating under French procedural inheritance or monarchical parliamentary tradition. It has no operative equivalent in American constitutional law, where the veto is a defined constitutional power with specific procedural requirements. Researchers working in British constitutional history will find related — but not identical — royal assent formulas.
---
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Jury Trial — Empanelment, Instructions, and Deliberation (The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia): relevant for the broader legal concept of deliberation in adjudicative contexts, though distinct from the royal formula meaning.
Homicide — First-Degree Murder (Premeditation and Deliberation) (The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia): relevant for deliberation as a mental-state element in criminal law — a distinct and unrelated usage that researchers should not conflate with this term.
---