Definition
*Le roi le veut* (Norman French: "the king wills it") is the royal assent formula used in the Parliament of England — and historically in France — by which the sovereign formally approved a bill passed by the legislature, transforming it into law. When spoken or recorded by the Clerk of the Parliaments on the sovereign's behalf, the phrase completed the enactment of legislation. The formula operates as the constitutional act of royal assent, the final stage of the legislative process under parliamentary systems derived from English constitutional practice.
The corresponding formula for a money bill is *le roi remercie ses bons sujets, accepte leur benevolence, et ainsi le veut* ("the king thanks his good subjects, accepts their benevolence, and so wills it"). The refusal formula — *le roi s'avisera* ("the king will consider it") — was the last recorded exercise of a royal veto in England, used by Queen Anne in 1708.
___
Common Confusion
*Le roi le veut* is sometimes loosely treated as synonymous with "royal assent" generally, but the two are not identical. Royal assent is the constitutional act; *le roi le veut* is one specific verbal formula through which that act was historically expressed for public bills. Separate Norman French formulas governed private bills, supply bills, and the rare case of refusal. Researchers encountering "royal assent" in modern sources should not assume the *le roi le veut* formula was used; the formal recitation of Norman French phrases in Parliament was largely ceremonial by the nineteenth century, and Royal Assent is today typically conveyed by written notification under the Royal Assent Act 1967 (U.K.).
___
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in historical and constitutional law sources. Researchers working with English parliamentary records before the twentieth century will encounter the phrase in accounts of legislative proceedings, particularly in materials describing the enactment ritual at Westminster. Several navigational points are worth noting:
**Temporal scope.** The phrase belongs to the era of active Norman French parliamentary usage, roughly the thirteenth through eighteenth centuries. By the nineteenth century it had become largely ceremonial, and by the mid-twentieth century the spoken formula had been formally displaced. Sources from different periods may treat the phrase with very different levels of seriousness as a legal act versus a ritual form.
**French parallel.** Bouvier cites Toullier for the use of a parallel formula in France. Researchers working in French legal history should treat the English and French traditions as related but distinct, and should not assume identical constitutional significance in the two systems.
**Corpus placement.** In the Law Mind corpus, this term is most likely to surface in works on English constitutional history, parliamentary procedure, and the history of legislation. It is unlikely to appear in case law or statutory text but may appear in treatises and legal histories as a shorthand reference to the royal assent power.
**Refusal as research signal.** When historical sources discuss whether *le roi le veut* was or was not pronounced, the underlying question is often about the scope of royal prerogative and its relationship to parliamentary supremacy — a contested constitutional issue across several centuries. The formula's presence or absence in a source may signal the author's position on that broader question.
___
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's entry is brief but accurate in its essentials: the formula signals royal assent to a bill, and Bouvier correctly notes its use in both England and France, citing Toullier's *Droit civil français* (1 Toullier, n. 52) for the French application. The entry does not distinguish between the formula's use for public bills versus private bills or supply bills, and it does not note the companion refusal formula *le roi s'avisera*, which is the more constitutionally significant phrase in later debates over royal prerogative. For a historical law dictionary, Bouvier's treatment is necessarily compressed; researchers needing fuller treatment of the parliamentary ritual should consult constitutional histories rather than law dictionaries alone.
No other source dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus cover this term, which reflects its status as a term of art belonging more to parliamentary procedure and constitutional history than to the working vocabulary of practicing lawyers.
___
Jurisdictional Note
The formula is specific to English parliamentary practice and its direct historical antecedents in French royal procedure. Commonwealth jurisdictions that retained formal royal assent procedures (Canada, Australia) may reference the concept but use modernized forms. The phrase has no operative role in United States law.
___