The Magna Carta
—Declaration of Rights and Grievances, First Continental Congress, October 14, 1774
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NARRATOR: It was issued by an English king and was written on parchment, made from sheepskin. So how did a document published over 800 years ago influence the U.S. Constitution?
In 1215, things weren’t looking good for King John of England. After losing a brutal war and lots of land to King Philip, the second of France, his reputation as a military leader was in tatters, and many of his subjects were angered by rising taxes that he imposed, which they couldn’t afford to pay.
As a result, the threat of rebellion was real. Under pressure from the English upper class, who also had a lot to lose, King John agreed to do something that no English king had ever done before. Establish a new set of rules that would limit his power as king, and protect the rights of his subjects. Magna Carta Libertatum, or Magna Carta for short, put those new rules down in writing. The document included 63 parts and was written on sheepskin parchment. It has influenced how countries around the world are governed to this day. During the American Revolutionary War, more than 500 years later, the Founding Fathers used the Magna Carta as a starting point for the Declaration of Independence, which set out their vision for what the United States should be and how it should be governed.
They took lots of ideas from the Magna Carta, including the notion that all U.S. citizens should enjoy the same rights and liberties. That the U.S. government should be restricted in what it could and couldn’t do, and that everyone, including the country’s leaders, should live by a set of laws that were written down and could not be broken. After colonists won their independence from Great Britain, the Founding Fathers also referred to the Magna Carta to create the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. That’s why Magna Carta is one of the most important documents in U.S. history.
Why do you think people place restrictions on their government leaders?
In 1215, Great Britain’s Magna Carta, or Great Charter, declared that the monarch would be subject to the rule of law and carefully laid out the liberties held by “free men.” Watch the video to learn more.
Several concepts from the Magna Carta are found in the U.S. Constitution, including trial by jury (6th and 7th Amendments), a writ of habeas corpus, and a system of checks and balances. While the protection offered by the Magna Carta only applied to the wealthy elite and the Church, it provided a foundation for defining a set of individual rights and structures of government to protect them. Before the Constitution was even written, the Continental Congress referenced the Magna Carta in their grievances against King George III in 1774.
Take Notes
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