Celebrate Magna Carta Day!

Wednesday, June 15^th, marks Magna Carta Day.  It has been 796 years since that day in 1215 when the seal of King John of England was affixed to the Great Charter of Liberties.

The importance of the document to Western Civilization and the fate of the English-speaking peoples cannot be overstated.  It established, in writing, the essential principle that no person, not even the ruling monarch, was above the law.  In addition, it established that under the same rule of law, individuals had rights.

I recently finished reading A Brief History of The Magna Carta:  The Story of the Origins of Liberty (Running Press, 2008), by Geoffrey Hindley.  Although our modern republic bears little resemblance to the feudal society of medieval England, it is amazing how little our political concerns have changed.  Issues surrounding the relationship between the individual and the state, as well as concerns over property rights, taxation, and the administration of justice, are as important today as they were in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

On anecdote that Hindley includes in his book jumped out as being very relevant to our current situation.   In 1209, the town of Maidford was seized by the King over the death (probably by natural causes) of a deer in a nearby royal hunting preserve.  Today, such arbitrary and collective punishment of a community over the natural demise of a local woodland creature does not seem so farfetched if you simply substitute “Endangered Species Act” for “Law of the Forest”.

True, Magna Carta did not establish a Parliament.  That innovation would take several more decades.  Also, it is not clear how far below the baronial classes these hard won rights extended.  But it is hard to imagine how we would have had a functioning democracy or a robust legal system if it were not for the events in that meadow in Runnymede nearly eight centuries ago.