MAGNA CARTA’S LEGACY: COMMON LAW AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Abstract

The eight hundredth anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta has been marked in various ways in Britain and throughout the world. The text of the various iterations of the Great Charter and their provenance have been subject to detailed scrutiny by historians, ecclesiologists, lawyers and laymen, fostering discussion and debate with increasing levels of subtlety and nuance. Sometimes the abiding myth of Magna Carta has been more in evidence than the factual reality. The distinguished jurist, Lord Bingham rightly observed that,

‘The significance of Magna Carta lay not only in what it actually said but, perhaps to an even greater extent, in what later generations claimed and believed it had said. Sometimes the myth is more important than the actuality’.

This paper is in four sections in the first part consideration is given to the Charter in its contemporary English political context. The second looks at other medieval European charters. The third section addresses the relevance of the Charter in the religiously diverse climate of the twenty-first century; and the paper then concludes with some reflections on the lasting effect of the Charter’s fundamental terms for the development of the common law and in the drafting of human rights instruments of the modern age.