By John R. Vile
Members of the media film four of the original surviving Magna Carta manuscripts that were brought together by the British Library for the first time, during a media preview in London, Monday, Feb. 2, 2015. The event marked the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, which established the timeless principle that no individual, even a monarch, is above the law. The original Magna Carta manuscripts were written and sealed in late June and early July 1215, and sent individually throughout the country. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant, used with permission from the Associated Press)
The Magna Carta, or Great Charter, is a series of concessions that English noblemen extracted from King John I at Runnymede, England, in 1215, and that some later monarchs reissued. The document’s preamble and 63 clauses remain an important foundation for the rights claimed by English citizens, including those who immigrated to the United States.
Magna Carta established fundamental government principles
Although Britain continues to operate according to the principle of parliamentary sovereignty and has never adopted a single written document, such as one resembling the U.S. Constitution, British citizens still look to the Magna Carta, as well as the later Petition of Right (1628) and English Bill of Rights (1689), as establishing fundamental principles that the government dare not violate. John Locke and William Blackstone were among the English legal theorists who expanded the principles of liberty in the Magna Carta.
"No taxation without representation" is most significant Magna Carta principle
In America’s colonial days, the most significant principle of the Magna Carta was that the king had no power to tax persons who were not represented in the government. Colonists cited this principle of “no taxation without representation” in the Declaration of Independence and in other documents that asserted colonial privileges. Before the Revolutionary War, the colonists viewed the charters issued to them by the king in the same way that they viewed the Magna Carta—as providing protections for their rights. Many of these protections were later incorporated into state constitutions before being expanded and incorporated into the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights.
Magna Carta is foundation for due process clause of Constitution
Clause 29 of the Magna Carta prevented the English government from jailing or punishing an individual “except by the lawful judgment of his peers and by the law of the land.” This clause is generally understood to provide the foundation of the due process clause of the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.
First Amendment foreshadowed by Magna Carta
The idea that nobles could meet with the king and present him with a set of grievances arguably foreshadowed both the peaceable assembly and petition provisions of the First Amendment. The provision of the Magna Carta that appears closest to the First Amendment is in Clause 1: “The English Church shall be free, and shall have her rights entire, and her liberties inviolate.” This text hardly prevents the establishment of a national church (Britain continues to recognize the Episcopal Church as the established church), as does the First Amendment, but it does acknowledge a sphere in which religious claims should be free of state supervision and control. Moreover, claims once associated specifically with the nobility have been widened both within Britain and the United States to include all citizens.
In 2015, the British Library featured a display of the Magna Carta, the U.S. Declaration of Independence, and the U.S. Bill of Rights to mark the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta.
John Vile is a professor of political science and dean of the Honors College at Middle Tennessee State University. He is co-editor of the Encyclopedia of the First Amendment. This article was originally published in 2009.
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Sweezy v. New Hampshire (1957) stands as the first U.S. Supreme Court case to expound upon the concept of academic freedom though some earlier cases mention it.
Most constitutional academic freedom issues today revolve around professors’ speech, students’ speech, faculty’s relations to government speech, and using affirmative action in student admissions.
Although academic freedom is regularly invoked as a constitutional right under the First Amendment, the Court has never specifically enumerated it as one, and judicial opinions have not developed a consistent interpretation of constitutional academic freedom or pronounced a consistent framework to analyze such claims.
The Magna Carta was a charter of rights agreed to by King John of England in 1215, and was Europe’s first written constitution. Prior to the implementation of the Magna Carta, English monarchs were considered above the law of the land and ruled with relatively absolute power. King John was pressured into agreeing to the Magna Carta to make peace in England, as barons from the north and east of England rebelled against his rule and demanded protection from the king’s unbridled power. The Magna Carta created a legal system by which the king had to abide, instilling protections for the clergy and nobility. The Magna Carta was the basis for English common law, and thereby indirectly also had influence on American law. The Founding Fathers of the United States particularly admired the charter’s rebellious nature against the English throne. The writers of the Bill of Rights and state constitutions were inspired by concepts born in the Magna Carta: that a government should be constitutional, that the law of the land should apply to everyone, and that certain rights and liberties were so fundamental that their violation was an abuse of governmental authority.
Although the Magna Carta was primarily meant to protect the powerful Church and wealthy nobility in medieval feudal England, it introduced legal concepts that persisted over time and came to be found in American law. Notably, its protections were given widely to all free men who held land, as opposed to solely the Church and nobility. It assured them protection from illegal imprisonment, forming the basis for the concept of a habeas corpus petition. It also promised them all access to swift justice - an early promise of due process. It guaranteed that they could not be imprisoned, outlawed, exiled, or have their possessions or land confiscated without the lawful judgment of their social equals, paving the way for trial by a jury of one’s peers. Moreover, the Magna Carta established a council of barons as a predecessor to Parliament, which monitored the king’s actions to ensure he abided by the new law and rectified breaches of the law. This council was therefore an early example of a checks and balances safeguard.
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The Magna Carta (1215)
Magna Carta, or “Great Charter,” signed by the King of England in 1215, was a turning point in human rights.
In 1215, after King John of England violated a number of ancient laws and customs by which England had been governed, his subjects forced him to sign the Magna Carta, which enumerates what later came to be thought of as human rights. Among them was the right of the church to be free from governmental interference, the rights of all free citizens to own and inherit property and to be protected from excessive taxes. It established the right of widows who owned property to choose not to remarry, and established principles of due process and equality before the law. It also contained provisions forbidding bribery and official misconduct.
Widely viewed as one of the most important legal documents in the development of modern democracy, the Magna Carta was a crucial turning point in the struggle to establish freedom.
Petition of Right (1628)
In 1628 the English Parliament sent this statement of civil liberties to King Charles I.
The next recorded milestone in the development of human rights was the Petition of Right, produced in 1628 by the English Parliament and sent to Charles I as a statement of civil liberties. Refusal by Parliament to finance the king’s unpopular foreign policy had caused his government to exact forced loans and to quarter troops in subjects’ houses as an economy measure. Arbitrary arrest and imprisonment for opposing these policies had produced in Parliament a violent hostility to Charles and to George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham. The Petition of Right, initiated by Sir Edward Coke, was based upon earlier statutes and charters and asserted four principles: (1) No taxes may be levied without consent of Parliament, (2) No subject may be imprisoned without cause shown (reaffirmation of the right of habeas corpus), (3) No soldiers may be quartered upon the citizenry, and (4) Martial law may not be used in time of peace.