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Hands off Magna Carta

By G.C. Seabourne

Ignoring decades if not centuries of excellent research on the background to and nature of Magna Carta and its various reissues, the current Master of the Rolls has produced an article (Times 2/10/08, p.60) on modern civil liberties and counter-terror law, drawing the usual shaky line from the miscellaneous Big Charter of Liberties to universal rights to fair treatment in the modern world, and painting a positive portrait of principled Conservative M.P. David Davis, who recently resigned and fought a fierce by-election in his safe seat, over the issue of government anti-terror legislation.

Obviously, detention without trial and phone- tapping are big issues, and equally obviously, individuals should not be mistreated by the state or its agents, but it is a distraction to hang this all on a document from the early thirteenth century, which certainly did not envisage civil liberties for all. It doesn?t mention women not being disseised or imprisoned, does it? It also came from a world in which by no means every man was ?free?.

It seems somewhat Anglocentric also, to say that Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights is an articulation of the principle in Magna Carta clause 39 ? did no other European nation have the idea that it might not really be fair to imprison people without trial?

Magna Carta is interesting. Magna Carta was important. If we keep sitting around congratulating ourselves about having had such a document, however, we are not engaging with the political and philosophical principles which we should wish to govern a vastly different world to that of John, his barons, their serfs and their unmentioned women.
 
Common Troublemaker

Full post as published by Common Lawyer on October 03, 2008 (boomark / email).