Thank the English Speaking People - Eight Hundred Years Ago at Runnymede

Magna Carta Embroidery

In spite of the Papal rejection, the rights from the Magna Carta took hold. The charter that came to stand for our Rights over Kings, Presidents, Governors, Mayors and all magistrates, over Parliaments, Congress, Legislators and all Governments, Regulators and Administrators needs to be renewed and reestablished against them. m/r

Magna Carta: Eight Centuries of Liberty - WSJ

By DANIEL HANNAN  May 29, 2015 

Eight hundred years ago next month, on a reedy stretch of riverbank in southern England, the most important bargain in the history of the human race was struck. I realize that’s a big claim, but in this case, only superlatives will do. As Lord Denning, the most celebrated modern British jurist put it, Magna Carta was “the greatest constitutional document of all time, the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot.”

It was at Runnymede, on June 15, 1215, that the idea of the law standing above the government first took contractual form. King John accepted that he would no longer get to make the rules up as he went along. From that acceptance flowed, ultimately, all the rights and freedoms that we now take for granted: uncensored newspapers, security of property, equality before the law, habeas corpus, regular elections, sanctity of contract, jury trials.

Magna Carta is Latin for “Great Charter.” It was so named not because the men who drafted it foresaw its epochal power but because it was long. Yet, almost immediately, the document began to take on a political significance that justified the adjective in every sense.

The bishops and barons who had brought King John to the negotiating table understood that rights required an enforcement mechanism. The potency of a charter is not in its parchment but in the authority of its interpretation. ...

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