Proclamation

The president of the United States communicates information on holidays, commemorations, special observances, trade, and policy through proclamations.

The OFR numbers each proclamation consecutively as part of a series and publishes it in the daily Federal Register shortly after receipt.

[1] In English law, a proclamation is a formal announcement ("royal proclamation"), made under the great seal, of some matter which the King-in-Council or Queen-in-Council desires to make known to his or her subjects: e.g., the declaration of war, or state of emergency, the statement of neutrality, the summoning or dissolution of Parliament, or the bringing into operation of the provisions of some statute the enforcement of which the legislature has left to the discretion of the king or queen[2] in the announcement.

[citation needed] Royal proclamations of this character, made in furtherance of the executive power of the Crown, are binding on the subject, "where they do not either contradict the old laws or tend to establish new ones, but only confine the execution of such laws as are already in being in such matter as the sovereign shall judge necessary" (Blackstone's Commentaries, ed.

But this enactment was repealed by the Treason Act 1547; and it is certain that a proclamation purporting to be made in the exercise of legislative power by which the sovereign imposes a duty to which the subject is not by law liable, or prohibits under penalties what is not an offence at law, or adds fresh penalties to any offence, is of no effect unless itself issued in virtue of statutory authority (see also Order in Council).

[2] The Crown has power to legislate by proclamation for a newly conquered country (Jenkyns, British Rule and Jurisdiction beyond the Seas); and this power was freely exercised in North America following the Seven Years' War by the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and in the Transvaal Colony during the Second Boer War 1899–1902.