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Crown

In English jurisprudence, the Crown is the state in all its aspects. In countries that do not have a monarchy, the concept may be expressed as "the State" or "the People", or some political entity, such as "the United States", "the Commonwealth" or "the State of [name]". Legally, the Crown is a corporation sole that—in the Commonwealth realms, Crown dependencies and any of its provincial or state sub-divisions—represents the legal embodiment of executive, legislative, or judicial governance. It developed first in the United Kingdom as a separation of the literal crown and property of the nation state from the person and personal property of the monarch. The concept spread through British colonisation, and is now rooted in the legal lexicon of the other 15 independent realms. In this context it should not be confused with any physical crown, such as those of the British state regalia. The term is also found in expressions such as crown land, which some countries refer to as public land or state land, as well as in some offices such as Minister of the Crown, Crown attorney and Crown prosecutor (other terms being District attorney, State prosecutor or public prosecutor).