<P> Before the modern judicial review procedure superseded the petition of right as the remedy for challenging the validity of a prerogative power, the courts were traditionally only willing to state whether or not powers existed, not whether they had been used appropriately . They therefore applied only the first of the Wednesbury tests: whether the use was illegal . Constitutional scholars such as William Blackstone consider this appropriate: </P> <P> In the exertion therefore of those prerogatives, which the law has given him, the King is irresistible and absolute, according to the forms of the constitution . And yet if the consequence of that exertion be manifestly to the grievance or dishonour of the kingdom, the Parliament will call his advisers to a just and severe account . </P> <P> During the 1960s and 70s this attitude was changing, with Lord Denning saying in the Laker Airway case that "seeing that the prerogative is a discretionary power to be exercised for the public good, it follows that its exercise can be examined by the courts just as any other discretionary power which is vested in the executive ." The most authoritative case on the matter is Council of Civil Service Unions v Minister for the Civil Service, generally known as the GCHQ case . The House of Lords confirmed that the application of judicial review would be dependent on the nature of the government's powers, not their source . Foreign policy and national security powers are considered outside the scope of judicial review, while the prerogative of mercy is considered within it, as per R v Secretary of State for the Home Department, ex parte Bentley . </P> <P> Abolition of the royal prerogative is not on the immediate horizon, and recent movements to abolish the role of the monarchy and its royal prerogative in government have been unsuccessful . The Ministry of Justice undertook a "review of executive Royal Prerogative powers" in October 2009 . Former Labour MP and cabinet minister Tony Benn campaigned unsuccessfully for the abolition of the royal prerogative in the United Kingdom in the 1990s, arguing that all governmental powers in effect exercised on the advice of the prime minister and cabinet should be subject to parliamentary scrutiny and require parliamentary approval . Later governments argued that such is the breadth of topics covered by the royal prerogative that requiring parliamentary approval in each instance where the prerogative is currently used would overwhelm parliamentary time and slow the enactment of legislation . </P>

Give one example to show that british law was arbitrary