MAGNA CARTA AND ITS HEIRS

Abstract

Can a legal document dating back 800 years still influence contemporary legal systems? As we celebrate the eight hundred year anniversary of the Magna Carta, this question needs to be answered.

It was on June 15, 1215, on the “meadow that is called Runnymede, between Windsor and Staines” that England’s Barons and clergy men asked – or rather forced – King John Lackland to issue a document that acknowledged warranties and liberties, which were construed as limitations on the political power. The document was the outset of “liberal constitutionalism,” which soon would pave the way for the English legal system, and many other legal cultures as well.

Battaglia has written that the Magna Carta is but one of many agreements that were sworn between kings and barons in which barons complained that their rights had been breached, and sought protection against abuses. Of course, the Magna Carta would leave its own mark: with Magna Carta, the royal power’s absolutism ended. Feudal nobles, who formed the Great Council, now constrained this former absolutism. The Commons’ representatives would later join the nobles.