June marks the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, the ‘Great Charter’ that established the rule of law for the English-speaking world. Its revolutionary impact still resounds today, writes Daniel Hannan
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King John, pressured
by English barons, reluctantly signs Magna Carta, the ‘Great Charter,’
on the Thames riverbank, Runnymede, June 15, 1215, as rendered in James
Doyle’s ‘A Chronicle of England.’
Photo:
Mary Evans Picture Library/Everett Collection
By Daniel Hannan
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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. The constitution of the U.S.S.R., to
pluck an example more or less at random, promised all sorts of
entitlements: free speech, free worship, free association. But as Soviet
citizens learned, paper rights are worthless in the absence of
mechanisms to hold rulers to account.
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