Happy 800th birthday Magna Carta! 1215-2015

[marylander1940]

Eight hundred years ago next month, on a reedy stretch of riverbank in southern England, the most important bargain in the history of the human race was struck. I realize that’s a big claim, but in this case, only superlatives will do. As Lord Denning, the most celebrated modern British jurist put it, Magna Carta was “the greatest constitutional document of all time, the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot.”

 

It was at Runnymede, on June 15, 1215, that the idea of the law standing above the government first took contractual form. King John accepted that he would no longer get to make the rules up as he went along. From that acceptance flowed, ultimately, all the rights and freedoms that we now take for granted: uncensored newspapers, security of property, equality before the law, habeas corpus, regular elections, sanctity of contract, jury trials.

 

http://www.wsj.com/articles/magna-carta-eight-centuries-of-liberty-1432912022

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ee/Magna_Carta_(British_Library_Cotton_MS_Augustus_II.106).jpg/1280px-Magna_Carta_(British_Library_Cotton_MS_Augustus_II.106).jpg