Magna Carta Research Guide

David A. Carpenter. Historical Research (Vol. 86, Iss. 232, 179-190). May 2013.
Using new material, including a hitherto unknown writ of King Henry III from 1253, this article explores the divisions which opened up between English secular and ecclesiastical reformers in the 1250s. It shows that in securing the confirmation of Magna Carta in 1253, the church gained far less than it had hoped, largely because the laity in parliament had limited sympathy with its wider claims. For the same reason, the king, magnates, and people in parliament rejected the church’s version of the sentence of excommunication which supported the 1253 confirmation of the charter. This division foreshadowed the events of 1258 when lay and ecclesiastical reformers went their own separate ways, with the result that the revolutionary reforms of 1258, which stripped the king of power, had neither ecclesiastical content nor support. They were thus very different and much weaker than Magna Carta, which had both.

David A. Carpenter. Historical Research (Vol. 86, Iss. 232, 191-195). May 2013.
The discovery of a hitherto unrecognized letter patent of King Henry III (British Library, Stowe MS. 937 fos. 135r-v) sheds new light on Henry’s confirmation of Magna Carta discussed in the author’s previous article Magna Carta 1253: the ambitions of the Church and the divisions within the realm.

Lord Irvine of Lairg. 119 L.Q. Rev. 227 (2003).
Written by Scottish lawyer, politician, and then-Lord Chancellor of the United Kingdom, this article is based on the inaugural Magna Carta Lecture, presented in the Great Hall of Parliament House, Canberra, on October 14, 2002. Throughout the paper, Irvine discusses how, for some, Magna Carta represents no more than a distant constitutional echo. His proposition, however, is that the spirit of Magna Carta continues to resonate in modern law, and has held constitutional significance from the time of its creation to the current day.

Richard H. Helmholz. The University of Chicago Law Review (Vol. 66, Iss. 2, 297-371). Spring 1999.
The English Magna Carta (1215) has long stood as a symbol of human liberty and the rule of law. Its intellectual origins are investigated, and the existence of possible influence on the Charter by the contemporary ius commune, the amalgam of Roman and canon laws that had emerged in consequence of the revival of legal studies on the Continent in the 12th century, is suggested. Comparing the substance of over half of the chapters with the contemporary ius commune, it is demonstrated that many similarities existed. Accepting the possibility of use of Continental sources in drafting the Charter helps explain otherwise puzzling features in it. It also accords with common patterns in legal development at the time.

Ralph V. Turner. History Today (Vol. 53, Iss. 9, 29-35). September 2003.
King John’s barons forced him to grant Magna Carta, the great charter of liberties that placed the English King under the law. The charter, agreed by John in 1215 at Runnymede meadow and confirmed in definitive form by Henry III in 1225, is a crucial document for England’s history, likely the best known of all documents surviving from medieval England. Likewise, Americans today accord Magna Carta semi-religious veneration, citing it constantly in political debates, judicial opinions, and newspaper editorials. Turner considers how and why Magna Carta became a beacon of liberty in Britain and, increasingly, in the U.S.

Max Radin. Harvard Law Review (Vol. 60, Iss. 7, 1060-1091). 1947.
Examines the Magna Carta as the source of civil and political liberty. Passages on which the reputation of the Magna Carta depends; Guaranties of personal liberty of every individual; Skepticism of some scholars against the Magna Carta.

H.D. Hazeltine. Columbia Law Review (Vol. 17, Iss. 1, 1-33). January 1917.
The story of the influence of Magna Carta on American constitutional development is but one phase of the whole history of English institutions and law in America, and this in turn is but one chapter in the history of a broader, a further-reaching development - the extension of English institutions and of English Common and Statutory Law to the many political communities that have formed or still form parts of the British Empire. In studying Magna Carta in America we are concerned, therefore, with one feature and one only, of this whole vast process. But just as the influence of Magna Carta in England itself cannot be understood apart from the long history of the ever-changing body of rules and principles that go to make up the system of English Common Law, of which the provisions of Magna Carta form only a part, so, too, an understanding of the influence of Magna Carta in American can only be reached by considering this great legal document as but one of the many sources of English Common Law in its American environment. In the present paper certain main features of the American development, throughout its three periods, will be suggested; but without any attempt at exhaustive consideration.

C.H. McIlwain. Columbia Law Review (Vol. 14, Iss. 1, 27-51). 1914.
An article published in the Columbia Law Review in 1914, discussing chapter 39 of King John’s Charter of Liberties, lack of legal knowledge amongst the English baronage, and the right of due process of the Common Law.

Edward Jenks. Independent Review (Vol. 44, Iss. 14, 260-273). 1904.
Jenks asserts that, a careful examination of the evidence, undertaken in discharge of a public duty, has slowly brought him to the conclusion, that there is no shadow of justification for the conventional doctrine - that in truth, Magna Carta was not (a) the work of the “nation” or the “people” in any reasonable sense of the term, nor (b) a landmark in constitutional progress, but (c) a positive nuisance and stumbling-block to the generation which came after it. In other words, it is “Great” only as the caravan giant is great, not as Napoleon and Goethe were great. It is a bulky document.