This essay on judicial review approaches its subject obliquely. It focuses on a particular site of constitutional abnormality: prerogative power. An analysis of the various iterations, historical and contemporary, between law and prerogative in its specific, rooted setting provides the basis for a more general account of the contemporary nature and role of judicial review, at a time when we appear to be entering a new 'age of prerogative' based on the politics of security and fear.