The historical contraction of discretionary prerogative into written law followed princely abuse

Evidence

It is easy to conceive, that in the infancy of governments, when commonwealths differed little from families in number of people, they differed from them too but little in number of laws: and the governors, being as the fathers of them, watching over them for their good, the government was almost all prerogative. A few established laws served the turn, and the discretion and care of the ruler supplied the rest. But when mistake or flattery prevailed with weak princes to make use of this power for private ends of their own, and not for the public good, the people were fain by express laws to get prerogative determined in those points wherein they found disadvantage from it: and thus declared limitations of prerogative were by the people found necessary in cases which they and their ancestors had left, in the utmost latitude, to the wisdom of those princes who made no other but a right use of it, that is, for the good of their people. — John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, 199

Categorization

• XREF: This developmental claim — that abuse of individual discretion drives codification — parallels the reader’s interest in how judicial discretion gets constrained by doctrine. — connects to: Benevolent rulers’ precedents endanger liberty when successors claim them as rights — John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, 203; Corporal punishment under Mehmed Ali was a sovereign prerogative — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 674; Royal writs defined which disputes the King’s courts would hear — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 1458

Broader Connections

• Corporal punishment under Mehmed Ali was a sovereign prerogative #exemplifies (0.75) — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 674