In law, a prerogative is an exclusive right given from a government or state and invested in an individual or group, the content of which is separate from the body of rights enjoyed under the general law of the normative state. It was a common facet of feudal law. The word is derived from O.Fr. prerogative (14c.), M.L. prerogativa "special right," from L. praerogativa "prerogative, previous choice or election," originally (with tribus, centuria) "unit of 100 voters who by lot voted first in the Roman comitia," from praerogativus (adj.) "chosen to vote first."
In modern popular culture usage, the word prerogative has come to mean the egalitarian condition of the right for anyone's own self-determination, e.g., that it is "one's prerogative" to do as they please. The antithesis of the legal historic use of the term, being private exclusion from anyone and determined to the individual from without.
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Famous quotes containing the word prerogative:
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“Universal empire is the prerogative of a writer. His concerns are with all mankind, and though he cannot command their obedience, he can assign them their duty. The Republic of Letters is more ancient than monarchy, and of far higher character in the world than the vassal court of Britain.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)