Posted on 09/21/2015 11:16:47 AM PDT by Academiadotorg
The details surrounding the Magna Carta are often overlooked, but it remains a revered document. Author David Starkey explained the importance of the Magna Carta while promoting his latest book, Magna Carta: The Medieval Roots of Modern Politics, at the libertarian think tank Cato Institute. Starkey is also a BBC Radio and TV presenter.
For openers, there is the reason why the Magna Carta was negotiated at Runnymede Fields. The English barons and King John selected that spot “because it was a bog,” said Starkey, “The place is moist, wet ground. It is a water meadow, so it is a place where you can’t fight. It is jaw, jaw not war, war.”
Starkey noted that the Magna Carta was written “because the [English] barons seized London, or rather, London surrendered to the barons.” London was where the royal treasury was located, which meant, in Starkey’s words, “John is finished” as the king of England.
Starkey averred that the Magna Carta “leads directly to the Bill of Rights” in the U.S. Constitution and is a demonstration of “the reworking and re-conceptualizing” of important principles in the Anglosphere. For example, it is in the Magna Carta where the concept of “you will have no sovereign” first appears. He saw many “similarities [between] modern politics and old monarchical politics” in his study of the Magna Carta.
(Excerpt) Read more at academia.org ...
OHH I love this author David Starsky he is saracatic
There are a lot of popular misconceptions about the Magna Carta. It wasn’t really the precursor to the Bill of Rights, it was more in the nature of a fight among the Board of Directors of a corporation.
Magna Carta was a living embodiment of the Jeffersonian concept of the purpose & origins of legitimate Government, and the right to rise against Government that violated those purposes, as set forth in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence.
No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.
To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.
First chink in the armor of the monarchy made at the behest of the Pope’s man Stephen Langton.
This applied to very few people, essentially the barony. Your quote seem incorrect - "equals" should be "peers". Villiens and merchants have a different treatment in the text, for example, because they did no have the rights of freemen. Peerage is an essential and assumed component of the text and one with which Americans certainly are no familiar.
“To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.”
Well, 800 years later and we still haven’t got that in the USA...
39. Nullus liber homo capiatur, vel imprisonetur, aut disseisiatur, aut utlagetur, aut exuletur, aut aliquo modo destruatur, nec super cum ibimus, nec super cum mittemus, nisi per legale judicium parium suorum vel per legem terre.
my latin is rusty is a rusty as John’s armor.
“parium suorum” translates to “their peers”
As long as your the Pope leading the rebellion.
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.
My only Latin was in responses to the Mass when it was done in Latin so if you must use a foreign or dead language, please give the translation, too. Pax Vobiscum.
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
The Latin is the original Magna Carta par. 39. I quarreled with a translation that had "equals" and not "peers" in it. It makes a huge difference.
It’s the precursor to the Constitution: a contract.
Once government is defined by contract anything is possible, though (democratic) feudalism is the nearly universal selection.
“equals” versus “peers” and who the rights apply to must yield to context. It is a French import of a word, thus it does not apply to lords of lower courts who are not speaking French at that time.
Look at paragraphs 52, 56, 57 and 59 and it is more clear that the barony are the ones doing the judging regarding the lands, castles, liberties, or rights. Paragraph 52 refers directly to the committee of the 25 rebel barons who were loyal to the Pope as the last resort - clearly not a dispute involving villeins and their wainnage.
Also compare par 20 and 21, where the “equal” versus “peer” context first arises in the singular case “pares suos.” A “liber homo” has no right to judgment by his equal in par. 21, while Eorls and Barons do.
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.
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