Definition
A French-language formula meaning "the king will deliberate on it." In constitutional and legislative history, this phrase was the formula by which the king of France interposed a suspensive or absolute veto against acts of the legislative assembly. Rather than a direct refusal, the formula expressed royal reservation — a withholding of assent that functioned, in practice, as a veto. The phrase belongs to a cluster of formal royal-response formulas used in parliamentary and assembly proceedings, each carrying a distinct legal effect depending on whether the crown was granting assent, refusing it, or deferring action.
Common Confusion
Le roi veut en délibérer is frequently encountered alongside two related but distinct formulas, and researchers must not conflate them. Le roy le veut (or la reine le veut — "the king/queen wills it") is the formula of royal assent to public bills in the Parliament of the United Kingdom, signifying affirmative approval. Le roi veut en délibérer, by contrast, is a French constitutional formula of deferral or veto — the opposite function. A third formula, Le roy remercie ses loyal sujets, accepte leur benevolence, et ainsi le veut ("the king thanks his loyal subjects, accepts their benevolence, and so wills it"), is the form of assent to private or money bills in Parliament. These three phrases look alike on a page, appear in proximity in historical sources, and are easy to misread as equivalent. They are not: assent, suspensive veto, and the form of fiscal assent are three legally distinct acts.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears primarily in works on French constitutional and public law from the revolutionary and post-revolutionary period, and in comparative constitutional commentary written in English during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Researchers working in Law Mind's corpus will encounter it most often in treatises discussing the constitutional monarchy established by the French Constitution of 1791, which granted Louis XVI a suspensive veto power — meaning the king could delay but not permanently block legislation. The formula le roi veut en délibérer was the formal expression of that suspensive veto.
The critical research trap is context: in pre-revolutionary France, royal reservation of deliberation carried different weight than the constitutionally bounded suspensive veto of 1791. Researchers reading historical commentary without attention to the specific constitutional period may incorrectly characterize the formula as representing either an absolute veto or a mere procedural delay. The distinction matters for any work touching on the theory of legislative sovereignty, separation of powers doctrine, or the legal history of the veto power.
The Toullier citation (1 Toullier, no. 42 in Black's; no. 48 in Bouvier's) refers to Charles-Bonaventure-Marie Toullier's Le droit civil français suivant l'ordre du Code, a foundational nineteenth-century French civil law treatise. The discrepancy in section numbers between Black's and Bouvier's is a minor bibliographic inconsistency worth noting if tracing the original source.
Because this is a term of French public law appearing in English-language legal dictionaries, it will surface in comparative constitutional law discussions, histories of the veto power, and commentary on legislative-executive relations written for common-law audiences trying to understand the French constitutional experiment. It does not appear as operative legal terminology in American or English domestic law.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's and Bouvier's are in near-complete agreement on this entry, both providing the same translation ("the king will deliberate on it") and the same functional explanation (the French royal veto formula). The sole divergence is the Toullier citation number (42 versus 48), which likely reflects different editions or a transcription error in one source. Neither dictionary elaborates on the constitutional mechanics of the suspensive veto or distinguishes the pre-revolutionary usage from the post-1791 constitutional context — a gap that researchers relying solely on these dictionary entries will need to fill from primary constitutional sources.
Black's is more useful here only in that it appends the companion formulas le roy le veut and the fiscal assent formula immediately after, giving the reader the comparative context needed to understand what le roi veut en délibérer is not. Bouvier's presents the entry in isolation, making the contrast less visible.
Jurisdictional Note
This formula is specific to French constitutional history and carries no operative legal force in American, English, or other common-law jurisdictions. Its relevance in Anglo-American legal research is entirely comparative and historical.