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Updated: May 23, 2025
In 1814 the Storthing explicitly refused a proposition to give the Cabinet Council this right, declaring that the King ought not to be deprived of all his privileges. All the King's Decrees must be countersigned by one of the Prime Ministers, but this countersignature implies only the responsibility for the agreement of the records with the resolutions taken.
Occasions might therefore occur when it was not only right, but also a duty to refuse countersignature. The Section of the Cabinet Council had appealed to the Justice-Departement for enlightenment on the subject, and they knew that there had been several occasions when the Norwegian side had maintained the same opinions as those now presented.
The King's duty in the aforesaid respect is incompatible with the opinion that the one Kingdom, by the refusal of Countersignature by its Prime Minister or otherwise, could undo a Royal Decree, by which he refused to make a resolution prejudicial to the other Kingdom or injurious to the Union.
Countersignature implied responsibility for the King's decisions, but in this case the government could not take that responsibility. But this conclusion was not a regular rule for the members of the Cabinet; it was a prescription for the forms to be observed in order to give a command legal validity.
The Departement now comes to the same conclusion as in 1847 when it discussed the question in another agreement namely in a Resolution on the intended proposal for a new Act of Union; in this there is a reference to the Norwegian conception that there is nothing to prevent a member of the Council from refusing countersignature and resigning his office.
The governor soon after sent his abdication for countersignature by these members of the ministry, and accordingly the government formally dissolved itself, after having done so de facto in the previous council of ministers.
The Section of the Cabinet Council finally decided that as a refusal to sanction would manifestly not be only injurious to the Kingdom, but also a denial of its Self-dependence, it had become a necessity to refuse countersignature, in order to avoid being a party in the matter. The Norwegian who did countersign would from that moment lose all national rights.
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