Magna Charta in United Kingdom

Meaning of Magna Charta

The following is an old definition of Magna Charta [1]: The Great Charter: the principal guaranty of English liberties, obtained June 19, 1215, from King John. With some alterations, confirmed in parliament by Henry III, his son. By 25 Bdw. I (1298), allowed as part of the common law; and copies were to be read twice a year in the churches, Contained few new grants – was declaratory of the grounds upon which the fundamental law rested. Redressed grievances incident to feudal tenures, and removed some forms of oppression by the crown. Copies are preserved in the British Museum, The original was in Latin; in the statute-book it is printed in Latin and English in parallel columns. It consisted of thirty-seven chapters or distinct statutes. The first chapter confirms the pre-Norman liberties; the seventh chiefly concerns dower, and quarantine; the eighth relates to the collection of crown debts, their priority, sureties, etc.; the ninth perpetuates the right of self-goverfiment in London, and certain boroughs; the tenth provides that the court of common pleas should be held in some fixed place; fha fourteenth forbids excessive fines; the twenty-ninth provides that life, liberty, and property shall be forfeited only by judgment of the subject’s peers or by the law of the land, and that justice and right are not to be sold, denied, or deferred; the thirtieth directs that foreign merchants shall be treated as English merchants are treated while abroad; the thirty-sixth relates to gifts to religious houses; the thirty-seventh recites that the charter was bought of the crown with a fifteenth of the movable property, in consideration whereof the king, for himself and his heirs, covenanted not to infringe the liberties specified. Many of its provisions have been modified by later legislation; and many are preserved in the bills of rights or constitutions of the States, The concessions of Magna Charta were wrung from the king as guaranties against the oppressions and usurpations of his prerogatives. . . The actual and practical security for English liberty against legislative tyranny was the power of a free public opinion represented by the Commons. The words of Magna Charta stood for very different things at the time of the separation of the American colonies from what they originally represented. . It is more consonant to the true philosophy of our historical legal institutions to say that the spirit of personal liberty and individual right, which they embodied, was,preserved and developed by a progressive growth and wise adaptation to new circumstances and situa- tions of the forms and processes found fit to give, from time to time, new expression and greater effect to modem ideas of self-government.

Resources

Notes and References

1. Concept of Magna Charta provided by the Anderson Dictionary of Law (1889) (Dictionary of Law consisting of Judicial Definitions and Explanations of Words, Phrases and Maxims and an Exposition of the Principles of Law: Comprising a Dictionary and Compendium of American and English Jurisprudence; William C. Anderson; T. H. Flood and Company, Law Publishers, Chicago, United States)