Magna Carta: English Common Law, Past & Future

choi

(1) Edward Rothstein, A New Preamble Before the Big Show; A permanent exhibition designed to prepare visitors for the nation's founding documents. New York Times, Dec 17, 2013
www.nytimes.com/2013/12/17/arts/ ... ional-archives.html
(exhibition review on "Records of Rights; The permanent exhibition opened this month at the National Archives")

Quote: "Why is Magna Carta an ideal preamble [to Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights--Anerica's founding documents]? Because it laid a foundation for much English law and inspired the founders of the United States in their own daring experiment. Magna Carta recognizes that even kings must defer to a 'law of the land;' that justice emerges from procedure, not fiat; and that 'free men' merited guarantees we would now call 'rights.'

Note:
(a) "written on thick vellum, with a threaded ribbon holding an ancient royal seal, is one of four surviving copies of the 1297 Magna Carta, a contract between English barons and their tyrannical king"
(i) vellum (n; from Anglo-French velim, veeslin, from *veelin, adjective, of a calf, from [Anglo-French] veel calf — more at VEAL [ultimately from Latin vitulus calf]):
"a fine-grained unsplit lambskin, kidskin, or calfskin prepared especially for writing on or for binding books"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vellum
(ii) vellum
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vellum
(photos)

(b) "Te document was purchased by the investor and philanthropist David M Rubenstein in 2007 for $21.3 million; he provided it on permanent loan" to National Archives.

David M Rubenstein (1949- ) is a co-founder and co-CEO of The Carlyle Group.

(c) "The document is flanked by two informative touch screens. Its ink, we learn, is derived from growths that form on oak leaf buds when wasps lay their eggs there. And its influence is surveyed from colonial times. On a 1775 Massachusetts 30 shilling note, a soldier holds a sword in one hand, Magna Carta in the other. The document helped shape the Declaration of Independence, the Fifth Amendment, court decisions and contemporary declarations."
(i) black
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bla
("Iron gall ink (also known as iron gall nut ink or oak gall ink) was a purple-black or brown-black ink made from iron salts and tannic acids from gall nut. It was the standard writing and drawing ink in Europe, from about the 12th century to the 19th century, and remained in use well into the 20th century" [a photo of an "oak apple" immediately follows])
(ii) Part 3: Latin Mottoes, in Oliver D Hoover, The Language of Liberty; Reading and interpreting inscriptions on coins of the American Confederation period (1776-1789). ANS Magazine, summer 2007,  
ansmagazine.com/Summer07/Liberty
("Fig. 13. United States: Continental Congress. 36-shilling paper note, December 7, 1775. Newman, p. 165. (ANS 0000.999.29699) 74 x 101 mm")

(d) "But then we turn a corner and discover that this promise is not to be fulfilled. Instead it is turned on its head. We are going to learn not how these ideas succeeded despite flaws, but how deeply, throughout our history, they have failed."

turn sth on its head:
"to cause something to be the opposite of what it was before  <These new findings turn the accepted theories on their head>"
Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus
dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/british/turn-sth-on-its-head

(e) "A panel [in the exhibition] explains that the documents’ ideals 'did not initially apply to all Americans,' adding, 'They were, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr, "a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.” '

fall heir to = be heir to: "inherit"

(f) "We see a reproduction of the 1784 voucher for a slave who labored constructing the president’s residence in Washington (later to become the White House)."
(i) Could it be 1794?  There is something inherently wrong with this sentence. US Constitution was adopted in 1787 and, following ratification in 11 strates, went into effect in 1789. Residence Act of 1790 created a national capital on Potomac River. See Washington DC
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_D.C
(section 1 History)
(ii) White House
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House
(first built between 1792 and 1800 [and burned down in War of the 1812]; section 1.1 1789-1800)
(iii) White House History Timelines; African Americans and the White House. The White House Historical Association, undated
www.whitehousehistory.org/whha_t ... n-americans-01.html
(caption of photo 1: "'Carpenter's Roll for the President's House.'  Wage rolls for May 1795 list five slaves Tom, Peter, Ben, Harry and Daniel, three of whom were slaves owned by White House architect James Hoban. NARA)

NARA stands for
National Archives and Records Administration
www.archives.gov/‎
(iv) Susan Roesgen and Aaron Cooper, Slaves Helped Build White House, US Capitol. CNN, Dec 2, 2013
www.cnn.com/2008/US/12/02/slaves.white.house/index.html
("A list of construction workers building the White House in 1795 includes five slaves - named Tom, Peter, Ben, Harry and Daniel -- all put to work as carpenters")

(g) You need not  read Web page 2, which grumbles about the Exhibition's harping on failures in US, rather than successes.

choi

(2) Magna Carta
(a) The Magna Carta. National Archives, undated
www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/magna_carta/


(b) Magna Carta and Its American Legacy. National Archives, undated.
www.archives.gov/exhibits/featur ... a_carta/legacy.html

Quote:

"Before penning the Declaration of Independence--the first of the American Charters of Freedom--in 1776, the Founding Fathers searched for a historical precedent for asserting their rightful liberties from King George III and the English Parliament. They found it in a gathering that took place 561 years earlier on the plains of Runnymede, not far from where Windsor Castle stands today.

"Of great significance to future generations was a minor wording change, the replacement of the term 'any baron' with 'any freeman' in stipulating to whom the provisions applied. Over time, it would help justify the application of the Charter's provisions to a greater part of the population. While freemen were a minority in 13th-century England, the term would eventually include all English, just as 'We the People' would come to apply to all Americans in this century.

"With the 1225 issuance, however, the evolution of the document ended. While English monarchs, including Henry, confirmed Magna Carta several times after this, each subsequent issue followed the form of this "final" version. With each confirmation, copies of the document were made and sent to the counties so that everyone would know their rights and obligations. Of these original issues of Magna Carta, 17 survive: 4 from the reign of John; 8 from that of Henry III; and 5 from Edward I [1297], including the version now on display at the National Archives.

"At the height of the Stamp Act crisis, William Pitt [[~1766; prime minister 1766-1768] proclaimed in Parliament, 'The Americans are the sons not the bastards of England.' Parliament and the Crown, however, appeared to believe otherwise. But the Americans would have their rights, and they would fight for them. The seal adopted by Massachusetts on the eve of the Revolution summed up the mood--a militiaman with sword in one hand and Magna Carta in the other.

Note: "Despite its historical significance, however, Magna Carta may have remained legally inconsequential had it not been resurrected and reinterpreted by Sir Edward Coke in the early 17th century. Coke, Attorney General for Elizabeth, Chief Justice during the reign of James, and a leader in Parliament in opposition to Charles I, used Magna Carta as a weapon against the oppressive tactics of the Stuart kings. Coke argued that even kings must comply to common law. As he proclaimed to Parliament in 1628, 'Magna Carta . . . will have no sovereign.'"
(i) Edward Coke (1552-1634)
(ii) House of Tudor Ended with Elizabeth I. James I of House of Stuart was succeeded by his son Charles I (1600-1649; reign 1625-1649; defeated in English Civil War and later executed)


(c) Magna Cartas of various years were all written in Latin.

Phil Williams, Four Surviving 1215 Magna Carta to Be Brought Together. Lincoln Cathedral, July 15, 2013 lincolncathedralfoundation.com/2013/07/four-surviving-1215-magna-carta-to-be-brought-together/
("There are four surviving copies of the 1215 Magna Carta – two copies belong to the British Library, one copy is owned by Lincoln Cathedral and one by Salisbury Cathedral")

Note: There is no need to read the rest of (c) or (d).


(d) Magna Carta, EncyclopaediaMagna Carta, Encyclopaedia Britannica, undated.
www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/356831/Magna-Carta

Quote:

"The charter meant less to contemporaries than it has to subsequent generations. The solemn circumstances of its first granting have given to Magna Carta of 1215 a unique place in popular imagination; quite early in its history it became a symbol and a battle cry against oppression, each successive generation reading into it a protection of its own threatened liberties. In England the Petition of Right (1628) and the Habeas Corpus Act (1679) looked directly back to clause 39 of the charter of 1215, which stated that 'no free man shall be…imprisoned or disseised [dispossessed]…except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.' In the United States both the national and the state constitutions show ideas and even phrases directly traceable to Magna Carta."  (brackets original)

"Durham Cathedral possesses the charters of 1216, 1217, and 1225.


(e) Magna Carta Libertatum (The Great Charter of Liberties); The first great charter of King Edward the First. Granted October 12th AD 1297
www.bsswebsite.me.uk/History/MagnaCarta/magnacarta-1297.htm
("translated from the original, preserved in the archives of the City of London by Richard Thomson, 1829;" full text)