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November 16, 2017|Anglo-American conservatism, Empiricism, Fusionism, John Locke, Locke's Second Treatise, Magna Carta, Ofir Haivry, Sir John Fortescue, Yoram Hazony

Anglifying American Conservatism

by Donald Devine|

When it seemed that conservatism was finally settling into some defined boundaries under the presidency of Donald Trump, however fitfully—into Trump alt-populists, Never Trump former neocons, establishmentarian veterans of the two Bush administrations, expert/reform conservatives, social communitarians, big L libertarians, and a residue of libertarian-conservative fusionists—here comes Anglo-American Toryism as the proper resolution.

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January 25, 2016|Edward Coke, Magna Carta, Martin Krygier

Magna Carta’s Votaries, Skeptics, and Traditionalists

by Marc DeGirolami|

The octocentennial of Magna Carta has presented an auspicious occasion for reflecting on exactly what we ought to be celebrating, if anything, about Magna Carta, an ancient document with a tenuous connection to our own time and place. Is Magna Carta the fountainhead of our most cherished rights and liberties? Or is it a document entirely of its own time—an unremarkable set of compromises between King John and a few of his rapacious barons—with next to nothing to say to us today? In this post, I’ll describe the responses of Professor Martin Krygier, one of the more penetrating writers on the…

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June 15, 2015|Church of England, Hamas, Magna Carta, Salisbury Cathedral, The One Percent, Tom Ginsburg

Magna Carta at 800: A Continuing Inspiration

by John O. McGinnis|

Samuel Johnson famously said: “That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.” Last week I thus went to Salisbury Cathedral, which contains one of the four original copies of the Magna Carta. The timing for stirring appropriate emotion too was auspicious. Today is the eight hundredth anniversary of the document’s signing.

Unfortunately, the contemporary setting made enthusiasm for the Magna Carta’s contribution to liberty and the rule of law harder to sustain. Instead of focusing on its history or specific elements of its reception into the English legal system, the Cathedral chose to open its exhibit with a video that portrayed various social movements whose connections with Magna Carta were sometimes obscure. One was absurd: an attack on Israel’s blockade of Gaza. One does not even need to agree with this policy to recognize that empowering Hamas, a theocratic and lawless group that regularly engages in summary executions of people unlikely enough to be under its thumb, hardly advances any ideals of liberty or legality. The video showed more about the ineffectual left-liberalism of today’s Church of England than anything useful about Magna Carta.

In the New York Times today, Tom Ginsburg provided some reasons that whatever the surrounding exhibit, a visitor should not get too excited about Magna Carta.

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April 7, 2015|Magna Carta, Winston Churchill

Title-Deed of Liberty: Winston Churchill on Magna Carta

by Justin D. Lyons|

 

This year marks the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, an important landmark in the development of the English common law. His consent dramatically extorted by defiant barons at Runnymede in June of 1215, King John agreed to limits on the power of the crown.

The spectacle of a proud king bending before the will of his subjects fired the imagination of one the greatest guardians of freedom: Sir Winston S. Churchill. Churchill frequently pointed to Magna Carta as the foundation of the British liberties he strove so mightily to defend. Indeed, the medieval charter retained a remarkable inspirational immediacy for Churchill, who was inclined to trace clear lines of descent through the congested and meandering corridors of history.

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July 8, 2014|Anglo-American Liberty, Inventing Freedom, Magna Carta, Self-Government

What a Providentially Bad President Can Do for America

by Ted McAllister|

King Arthur: I am your king!

Woman: Well I didn’t vote for you!

King Arthur: You don’t vote for kings.

Woman: Well how’d you become king then?

— Monty Python and the Holy Grail

In his enviably readable book Inventing Freedom, Daniel Hannan refers to King John of England as “providentially bad.” Most importantly for the cause of English liberty (and by extension American liberty), the “obnoxious” and overbearing behavior of King John resulted in the Magna Carta. Had John been more artful and politically deft he might have aggrandized more power to himself and imposed a number of political innovations on a disgruntled people. But John, being bad, inspired reaction.

A century and a half after the Norman invasion brought to England a new ruling class and an imposed Continental feudal political arrangement, the nobility—who were themselves the offspring of the “bastard” Normans—drew deeply from the older Anglo-Saxon traditions still encoded in the sinews of English order to check the king and produce a crystalized defense of old liberties. In the Magna Carta they drew from the past but also altered the future. Often in reaction we make progress.

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February 18, 2014|Constitution, Due Process Clause, Fifth Amendment, Magna Carta, Substantive Due Process, Supremacy Clause, The Federalist

The “Law of the Land” Clause of Magna Carta, the Supremacy Clause, and Judicial Review

by Josh Blackman|

During a recent trip to the National Archives, I saw one of the earliest known copies of Magna Carta in existence. And I remembered one of my favorite parts of Magna Carta, the “Law of the Land” clause:

No freeman is to be taken or imprisoned or disseised of his free tenement or of his liberties or free customs, or outlawed or exiled or in any way ruined, nor will we go against such a man or send against him save by lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land. To no-one will we sell or deny of delay right or justice.

This pronouncement, that neither life, liberty, nor property can be taken except by the “judgment of his peers or by the law of the land,” is the constitutional predecessor of our Due Process Clause. This also served as a basis for some notion of judicial review. Some argue that this history provides for a substantive component of law, rather than a mere procedural aspect.

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March 22, 2012|Constitutiona, Declaration of Rights, Federalism, Great Charter, Magna Carta, Originalism, Sandy Levinson, the Petition of Right

A Case for Constitutional Reverence

by Hans Eicholz|

In his second response to Sandy Levinson’s call for a new constitutional convention, Michael Greve cast doubt upon the efficacy of such a project  given the mess of our fiscal circumstances. Under present conditions, how could we ever simply focus on the structural challenges unencumbered by current political expediencies? In essence, it’s far too late to hope for the degree of detachment and deliberation that would be necessary from any mere collection of mortals. There is another side to this, though, that links, interestingly, to the whole debate about the nature of history and originalism.

I would like to suggest that the Constitution we have, has taken its place alongside other key documents in the western legal tradition, not because it has preserved inviolate a coherent legal and institutional order, but rather because it has served as a cultural Polaris in favor of the presumption of liberty. In this sense, James Stoner’s contention that we are still within the confines of a constitutional system as originally understood, seems altogether too optimistic. Rather, we have returned to something more like the earlier English constitution. Sandy Levinson’s post affords a nice way to conceptualize that issue.

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December 20, 2011|Common Law, Magna Carta, Theodore Plucknett

The Common Law and Western Liberty

by Steven Grosby|

More than twenty years ago, a young man of fine character visited me to describe what he had been learning, as a graduate student studying political philosophy, at one of this country’s better universities. He began with understandable enthusiasm (for he—a modest person—was rightly proud to be studying at a distinguished university) by telling me about what he thought was Thomas Hobbes’ new view of sovereignty, explaining that, according to Hobbes, laws are (can only be) the commands of the sovereign. Before he could proceed to describe Hobbes’ account of the individual’s fear of death leading to an original contract where the individual transfers authority and power to a sovereign so that the individual’s life may be better protected, I interrupted him with this question, “What did this view of sovereignty have to do with the Magna Carta?”

Book Reviews

A Mirror of the 20th-Century Congress

by Joseph Postell

Wright undermined the very basis of his local popularity—the decentralized nature of the House—by supporting reforms that gave power to the party leaders.

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The Graces of Flannery O'Connor

by Henry T. Edmondson III

O'Connor's correspondence is a goldmine of piercing insight and startling reflections on everything from literature to philosophy to raising peacocks.

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Liberty Classics

Rereading Politica in the Post-Liberal Moment

by Glenn A. Moots

Althusius offers a rich constitutionalism that empowers persons to thrive alongside one another in deliberate communities.

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James Fenimore Cooper and the American Experiment

by Melissa Matthes

In The American Democrat, James Fenimore Cooper defended democracy against both mob rule and majority tyranny.

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Podcasts

Stuck With Decadence

A discussion with Ross Douthat

Ross Douthat discusses with Richard Reinsch his new book The Decadent Society.

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Can the Postmodern Natural Law Remedy Our Failing Humanism?

A discussion with Graham McAleer

Graham McAleer discusses how postmodern natural law can help us think more coherently about human beings and our actions.

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Did the Civil Rights Constitution Distort American Politics?

A discussion with Christopher Caldwell

Christopher Caldwell discusses his new book, The Age of Entitlement.

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America, Land of Deformed Institutions

A discussion with Yuval Levin

Yuval Levin pinpoints that American alienation and anger emerges from our weak political, social, and religious institutions.

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About

Law & Liberty’s focus is on the classical liberal tradition of law and political thought and how it shapes a society of free and responsible persons. This site brings together serious debate, commentary, essays, book reviews, interviews, and educational material in a commitment to the first principles of law in a free society. Law & Liberty considers a range of foundational and contemporary legal issues, legal philosophy, and pedagogy.

The opinions expressed on Law & Liberty are solely those of the contributors to the site and do not reflect the opinions of Liberty Fund.
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