The trial rights of the criminally accused if not already in place were evolving under the common law independently of the Magna Carta.
As for the other Civil Rights, for the most part frithguild is correct; the Magna Carta only applied to the nobility and not to all. When I referred to this as fight among the Board of Directors, it really was. At the time of the Magna Carta, well over 90% of the land in England was held by a handful of families, all of whom were directly descended from the nobles who accompanied William the Conqueror in 1066. As part of the Norman occupation of England, William’s men took the land in the idea that they were all in it together Even though William reasserted royal authority over the land in the Domesday Book in 1086, it was never popular with the nobility who considered themselves not as subjects. In reality, they considered themselves something the equivalent of stockholders of a major corporation.
I would rather look at the Magna Carta as a shareholders revolt in asserting their rights as shareholders, rather than some great creation of liberty. The shareholders had no intention of extending these “rights” to the commoners or the peasantry.
Interesting analogy to a BOD.
The Assize of Clarendon, probably patterned after the Concordant of Worms, reserved the power in the King in the appointment of Bishops. You can look at a Bishopric as a performing asset and the producer of a revenue stream. How the Pope and the Monarch divvied up stream and the power to develop it in accord to their will was I think the primary struggle that led to Magna Carta.
I look at the Common Law as entirely separate from ecclesiastical law and the law of the land. The Common Law springs from the petty assizes that itinerant justices administered, which were a better alternative to manorial courts and Anglo Saxon law. It is “Common Law” because it was important to commoners. So the Common Law did not reach criminal trials.
I am not sure, but if I recall correctly the ecclesiastical Courts at this time took jurisdiction over any crime that involved spilled blood. At minimum, in Clarendon a Bishop administers the criminal law upon penalty of excommunication and degradation, while the King reserved the right to sentence. So the criminal law is on a totally different track from the Common Law
Yes, but the MC was the first document taking absolute power away from the king. Before that, kings and queens had absolute power over everybody in their kingdom. The MC changed that.
If I recall when the U.S. was first founded, the signers/landholders didn't want equal rights for all citizens. We had slavery and no voting or property rights for women.
Full democratization was a long, drawn out process. But we are better for the MC.