Down the road only a few generations, the millennium of the Magna Carta, one of the great events in the establishment of civil and human rights, will arrive. Whether it will be celebrated, mourned, or ignored is not at all clear.
That should be a matter of serious immediate concern. What we do right now, or fail to do, will determine what kind of world will greet that event. It is not an attractive prospect if present tendencies persist – not least, because the Great Charter is being shredded before our eyes.
The first scholarly edition of Magna Carta was published by the eminent jurist William Blackstone. It was not an easy task. There was no good text available. As he wrote, “the body of the charter has been unfortunately gnawn by rats” – a comment that carries grim symbolism today, as we take up the task the rats left unfinished.
Blackstone’s edition actually includes two charters. It was entitled The Great Charter and the Charter of the Forest. The first, the Charter of Liberties, is widely recognised to be the foundation of the fundamental rights of the English-speaking peoples – or as Winston S Churchill put it more expansively: “The charter of every self-respecting man at any time in any land.” Churchill was referring specifically to the reaffirmation of the charter by parliament in the Petition of Right, which implored King Charles to recognise that the law was sovereign, not the king. Charles agreed briefly, but soon violated his pledge, setting the stage for the murderous English Civil War.
After a bitter conflict between king and parliament, the power of royalty in the person of Charles II was restored. In defeat, the Magna Carta was not forgotten. One of the leaders of parliament, Henry Vane, was beheaded. On the scaffold, he tried to read a speech denouncing the sentence as a violation of the Magna Carta, but was drowned out by trumpets to ensure that such scandalous words would not be heard by the cheering crowds. His major crime had been to draft a petition calling the people “the original of all just power” in civil society – not the king, not even God. That was the position that had been strongly advocated by Roger Williams, the founder of the first free society in what is now the state of Rhode Island. His heretical views influenced Milton and Locke, though Williams went much farther, founding the modern doctrine of separation of church and state, still much contested even in the liberal democracies.
“In a unanimous decision, the US Supreme Court held that the rights guaranteed by [the Habeas Corpus Act] were ‘[c]onsidered by the Founders [of the American Republic] as the highest safeguard of liberty’. All of these words should resonate today.”
As often is the case, apparent defeat nevertheless carried the struggle for freedom and rights forward. Shortly after Vane’s execution, King Charles II granted a Royal Charter to the Rhode Island plantations, declaring that “the form of government is Democratical,” and furthermore that the government could affirm freedom of conscience for Papists, atheists, Jews, Turks – even Quakers, one of the most feared and brutalised of the many sects that were appearing in those turbulent days. All of this was astonishing in the climate of the times.
A few years later, the Charter of Liberties was enriched by the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, formally entitled “an Act for the better securing the liberty of the subject, and for prevention of imprisonment beyond the seas.” The US Constitution, borrowing from English common law, affirms that “the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended” except in case of rebellion or invasion. In a unanimous decision, the US Supreme Court held that the rights guaranteed by this act were “[c]onsidered by the Founders [of the American Republic] as the highest safeguard of liberty”. All of these words should resonate today.
Read more at Al Jazeera.
