Charting legal history on the Magna Carta’s 800th anniversary

Only eight centuries ago King John of England – the same infamous King John of Robin Hood legend – sealed the terms of a peace treaty between himself and a group of rebellious barons at Runnymede, in a document that has become known to history as Magna Carta (Great Charter).
The document established the principle that everybody, including the King, was subject to the law, and thereby established the fundamental and foundational element in English Common Law.
Professor of English Legal History at the University of Oxford Paul Brand, widely regarded as the world’s leading Magna Carta expert, says before Magna Carta the absence of any written constitution for England or Britain gives “peculiar importance to what can been seen as the nearest thing we have to a foundational document for subsequent English constitutional development.”
Professor Brand is this year’s Miegunyah Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the University of Melbourne and will this week deliver the 2015 Miegunyah public lecture for the Melbourne Law School on the document’s first century of existence.
Professor Brand says Magna Carta’s legacy is evident beyond English borders, and Australia’s shared constitutional heritage with Britain has the charter echoed in our own Constitution, with two of the 1215 version’s clauses, in modern form, effectively in law:
39. No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed, or outlawed, or banished, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor send upon him, except by the legal judgement of his peers or by the law of the land.
40. To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny, or delay right or justice.
“Its spirit also resonates within both the United States’ Declaration of Independence and United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” he says.
“Magna Carta has endured for eight centuries because it is the earliest legislation to become part of the written heritage of the Common Law and of common lawyers and, as such, the earliest written statement of various broad principles of the Common Law.
“It has had a long history of accretion of meaning to the original text which has allowed later lawyers and judges to see it as entrenching the right to trial by jury in criminal cases and the right of habeas corpus (which establishes the legitimacy or otherwise of imprisonment), things which were not part of what Magna Carta originally meant but which they found helpful in arguing for constitutional liberty.”
Professor Brand’s lecture, “The First Century of Magna Carta and the Law” will explore the importance of the iconic document from its initial sealing in 1215 to its subsequent reissues in 1216, 1217, 1225, 1297 and 1300.
Leading up to the document’s anniversary, the historian has been involved in a landmark investigation into its history, including providing online translations and commentaries on the text.
He said it was his discovery at school that learning Latin allowed him direct access to primary materials of English medieval law, including the Magna Carta, which sparked his initial interest in the topic.
He has since built on his passion a career spanning more than four decades.
“The most rewarding aspects of my career have been communicating to others through lectures and teaching my enthusiasm for English medieval legal history, the opportunity of editing important primary materials, and writing articles and monographs about aspects of my subjects,” Professor Brand says.
Making his first visit to Australian shores, Professor Brand believes the significance of one of the founding documents of modern law and democracy will continue to hold its appeal for centuries to come.
“Magna Carta has a good track record of acting as a continuing source of inspiration,” he says, “and I certainly hope that it will continue to be thought of in that way.”
Professor Brand will deliver his free public lecture at Melbourne Law School, 185 Pelham Street, Carlton on Wednesday, 15 April from 6.30pm.
Online registrations are essential and can be made at
www.law.unimelb.edu.au