The greatest contribution from the legal systems of Great Britain and the United States toward peace in the world has been the principle that all nations should live under the Rule of Law - that laws should be enacted by democratically elected legislative bodies and enforced by independent judiciaries - is fundamental to a free society. The knowledge that there are certain basic rights of the individual that are enforceable even against the state has been the hallmark of our system of governance.
Our constitutional heritage has been influenced significantly by Magna Carta, the document signed by King John of England in 1215 limiting his own monarchial powers as a settlement with his own warring barons. Its importance is acknowledged in the Supreme Court building itself, where the two bronze doors through which most people enter the Court depict a scene of King John sealing Magna Carta. In the courtroom itself, as I sit on the bench, I can see a marble frieze portraying the great lawgivers of history. There, among Chief Justice John Marshall, Napoleon, and Justinian, stands King John - clothed in chain-mail armor and clutching a copy of Magna Carta.
We might wonder that a treaty extracted at the point of the sword from a feudal king would have such a powerful and enduring influence on constitutional development in England, the United States, and other nations. Magna Carta, however, expresses an idea that retains vitality today, more than 750 years after King John met the barons at Runnymede. That idea, as described by Sir Winston Chuchill, is the "sovereignty of the law" as protection against attempts by governments "to ride roughshod over the rights or liberties" of the governed.
The origins of Magna Carta gave little hint of its subsequent importance. King John acceded to the demands of the barons in an unsuccessful effort to ward off a civil war. Some of the specific clauses of Magna Carta, it is fair to say, reflected a self-interested effort by rebellious barons to restore feudal custom and to protect themselves from the king. The charter was annulled only two months after King John affixed his seal. In the next two centuries Magna Carta was repeatedly issued, withdrawn, reissued, and confirmed. The 1297 confirmation provided that the king's "Justices, Sheriffs, Mayors, and other Ministers shall allow the Great Charter as the Common Law" and "that if any Judgment be given from henceforth contrary to the Charter shall be undone, and holden for nought." Magna Carta was of great political importance in the struggles between the English Crown and Parliament. It was cited as embodying the fundamental law of the realm, binding on all persons - including the king.
The first colonists brought with them to America the perception of Magna Carta as the written embodiment of fundamental law protecting the rights and liberties of all Englishmen everywhere. This view was expressed in various colonial charters, including the Virginia Charter of 1606 written in part by Sir Edward Coke, on of Magna Carta's greatest exponents. The Massachusetts General Court resolved in 1635 that "some men should be appointed to frame a body of grounds of laws, in resemblance to a Magna Carta, which should be received for fundamental laws."
During the American Revolution, Magna Carta again served as a rallying point for those seeking protection against arbitrary government. As John Adams observed in 1778, "Where the public interest governs, it is a government of laws and not of men. If, in England, there has ever been such a thing as government of laws, was it not Magna Carta?"
When it came time to draft our own Constitution and Bill of Rights, the founders adopted both certain concepts found in Magna Carta and the more general notion of a written statement of fundamental law binding upon the sovereign state. Examples of important provisions of our Constitution that draw from Magna Carta are the requirement of legislative approval of taxation, the guarantee of freedom of religion, the requirement of speedy trials in criminal cases, and the establishment of an independent judiciary. Especially significant, of course, is the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.
To appreciate the relation between Magna Carta and our constitutional right to due process, we need only recall the language of Chapter 39 of Magna Carta: "No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or disseized or outlawed or exiled or in any way ruined nor will we go and send against him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land."
The language was echoed in our own Constitution nearly six centuries later in the Fifth Amendment, which declares: "No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment by a Grand Jury; nor shall any person be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."
The impact of Magna Carta on our constitutional development is not merely a historical one. The Supreme Court continues to refer to Magna Carta for inspiration and guidance in identifying those rights that are fundamental. Indeed, in the last forty years the Court has cited Magna Carta in more than fifty written opinions. These references, moreover, are not merely the sentimental acknowledgement of a fondly but dimly remembered ancestor. Instead, our Court has looked to concepts embodied in Magna Carta in important decisions that concern, for example, the Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unsual punishment, the requirement that trial by jury be afforded in state criminal prosecutions, and the access of indigents to review of criminal convictions.
Magna Carta relied on "the law of the land" to secure the citizen against the arbitrary action of the Crown. The underlying idea of written fundamental law that protects people from excesses by their government profoundly influenced and still continues to guide our constitutional development.