Yesterday the 15th, marked 808 years since the magna Carta was written. It literally means the great Charter. Magna Carta was issued in June 1215 and was the first document to put into writing the principle that the king and his government was not above the law. It sought to prevent the king from exploiting his power, and placed limits on royal authority by establishing law as a power in itself. King John had to issue the Charter to diffuse political tensions. The Barons had to stand up for their rights in 1215.
This document guaranteed Barons their ancient rights: No new taxes unless a common counsel agrees. All free men have the right to justice and a fair trial with a jury. The Monarch doesn’t have absolute power. On its 803rd Anniversary, this below was my write up
“The Magna Carta is relatively unsplashy, as these things go — not very long, not very elegantly written, just 3,500 or so words of Medieval Latin crammed illegibly onto a single page of parchment. But Magna Carta, presented by 40 indignant English barons to their treacherous king in the 13th century, has endured ever since as perhaps the world’s first and best declaration of the rule of law, a thrilling instance of a people’s limiting a ruler’s power by demanding rights for themselves. I am waiting for the extravagant ceremony in Runnymede, the meadow near Windsor where King John of England capitulated to the barons’ demands and affixed his royal seal to the original document all those years ago. The event will feature, among other things, a group of 500 American lawyers travelling with the American Bar Association, a host of England’s foremost jurists and scholars and — as a sign of how far monarchs have come since medieval times — Queen Elizabeth II, attending not on sufferance, but of her own free will. The renowned English judge Lord Denning called Magna Carta “the greatest constitutional document of all times — the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot.”…We students of Constitutional Law celebrate the 800th Anniversary of Magna Carta . Magna Carta established for the first time that everybody was subject to the law, and that nobody, not even the king, was above that law.” It was also the foundation of human rights. “Nobody should be able to compromise the demand of justice because that is what we build peace on in our world,” said the Very Reverend June Osborne of Salisbury Cathedral.”
The crown had violated a number of ancient laws and customs by which England had been governed, his subjects forced him to sign the Magna Carta, which enumerates what later came to be thought of as human rights. Among them was the right of the church to be free from governmental interference, the rights of all free citizens to own and inherit property and to be protected from excessive taxes. It established the right of widows who owned property to choose not to remarry, and established principles of due process and equality before the law. It also contained provisions forbidding bribery and official misconduct
While the Magna Carta is primarily associated with England and its impact on the development of parliamentary democracy, the idea of limited government and individual rights contained in the document has had a global impact. The principles therein have been enshrined in the Bill of Rights that is in most of the Commonwealth countries’ constitutions
Whereas there is no direct significance of the Magna Carta to Africa because it was signed in England and mainly dealt with the relationship between the king and his subjects and the governance of England.
But the principles it embodies, such as the idea that no individual is above the law and the importance of protecting individual rights, have been influential and have helped shape the development of democracy and human rights globally, including in Africa
Another great takeaway is that no one should endure bad and repressive laws. It is the duty of each right thinking member of the society to always stand up to bad laws and become an agent of change.
Mwene 