April 17, 2013
Rochester’s pivotal role in the XII Century and why it matters today
Worcester, Sir Robert, Rochester’s pivotal role in the XII Century and why it matters today, Rochester Cathedral Business Guild Dinner, 17th April 2013.
Click on the following link to download the full speech: MC Rochester Cathedral speech 17.4.13 website
February 26, 2013
Magna Carta History and Politics
These days the process of reflecting on major events in the past turns to a large extent on the celebration of anniversaries. In the last few years we have had the anniversaries of the abolition of slavery, the publication of Darwin’s, Origins of Species, of the King James Bible. Next year, we will be hearing a lot about the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. The anniversary with which I am concerned today is that of the panerai replica making of Magna Carta eight hundred years ago in June 1215. In 2010 an Anniversary Committee was established, under the chairmanship of Sir Robert Worcester, and we are already at work planning a series of lectures, exhibitions, broadcasts, pageants and other events to mark the occasion, these spread across the country and culminating, we hope, in a visit to Runnymede by HM the Queen, who has graciously agreed to be our Patron.
To read the full talk, click here.
February 8, 2013
Perspectives on Human Rights & Australian Foreign Policy
Nearly 25 years ago, I stood in a bookshop asking myself if I really wanted to read another book on the Holocaust.
I opened If This Is a Man at Primo Levi’s description of an Auschwitz hut in the middle of the night.
He describes the sound of sleeping prisoners moving their jaws as they dream of food.
Levi writes: “You not only see the food, you feel it in your hands, distinct and concrete… someone in the dream even holds it to your lips.”
I decided to buy it.
The most important book of the 20th Century: Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man.
Because it is the best of all the books in the literature of testimony.
Because it is a monument to all those who were killed in the last century by totalitarian dictatorships.
Because it tells us what humans are capable of.
Click here to read the full speech.
November 29, 2012
The Relevance of the Magna Carta to the 21st Century
Sir Robert Worcester, Chairman of the 800th Anniversary Commemoration Committee, gave a speech at the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas in November 2012. Follow this link to see the Youtube video of the lecture.
August 17, 2012
Parliamentary Libraries Celebrate 800th Anniversary of the Magna Carta
A King hoping to avert civil war approved Magna Carta in a field in the countryside of Runnymede, England on June 15, 1215. Since that time it has become one of the most celebrated documents in history. While King John conceded to the demands of his barons and affixed his seal to Magna Carta, less than three months later the Pope voided the document and war broke out. In spite of its initial failure, Magna Carta was reissued several times after the death of King John and has become a cornerstone of the rule of law worldwide.
This great charter of rights and liberties stands at the historic heart of English and American Law. It is one of the earliest statements of limited government and a point of departure for centuries of thought on individual rights. This paper describes how parliamentary libraries in the UK and USA, will celebrate this historic anniversary.
To read the full paper click here
June 15, 2012
Sovereignty, Democracy, Justice: elements of a good society?
The current discussion about reform of the House of Lords is beginning to generate – if a bit slowly – some wider discussion about the character of our constitution overall and, more broadly still, about the nature of democracy itself. If we want a reformed second chamber, we need to be clear about why we want a second chamber at all; and if we do, should it have exactly the same kind of accountability as the first chamber, the primary lawmaking body? Indeed, what is political accountability?
To read the full speech, please follow the link below:
June 8, 2012
Still a Role for the Barons?
At the time of Magna Carta, the title of Baron was somewhat more encompassing than it is today. The title encompassed all those who held land directly from the king. In the twelfth century, the more senior barons would receive a personal writ of summons to the King’s council, and this body constituted the precursor of the House of Lords. The junior or lesser barons, who held manors, would come to receive a single summons, issued to them as a group in each county. These lesser barons evolved into knights of the shires and their summoning to court was to form the basis of what was later to be the House of Commons.
The title of baron is today one of the five ranks of peerage. I propose to address it, though, in its original usage, as a term encompassing all members of the peerage. I also propose to address it from the perspective of those peers collected in a body that had a role in relation to determining the law of the land. When peers were summoned to the king’s court, it was not in order to make the law, but rather to advise the king in his determination of the law.
To read this in full, please download the PDF below:
April 14, 2012
The Relevance of Magna Carta: under threat as never before after nearly 800 years of evolution?
Good evening ladies and gentlemen.
It is a great pleasure to visit Washington where I lived for several years some fifty years ago to speak to the National Society Magna Charta Dames and Barons’ Annual Dinner.
I have a confession to make. I am not eligible to become a member of your fine organisation.
Chances are I cannot make a solid claim to have descended from one or more of the 25 Barons of Runnymede. The odds are stacked against me. Only one Baron, just one of the 25, was of Anglo-Saxon stock. Only 17 had children. If he didn’t, I had no chance at all!
By the 13th Century there had been considerable reduction in the distance between the Normans who had conquered England in 1066 and had separated it into the French/Norman aristocracy and the Anglo-Saxon peasants. The Anglo-Saxon nobles were recovering from the time of William and his son Rufus, who had confiscated the property of the English ruling class, divided the spoils of war, and subjugated its people.
Over the 150 years since, the very fact that the likes of Guilbert and Richard de Clare, William de Lanvellei, Saher de Quincy, William de Mowbray and John de Lacy were present at Runnymede is a clear signal that they were descended through several generations of the landed gentry, while the likes of my ancestors had lost their power, their lands and castles, their wealth and their status in society.
This means that at least 16 of the 17 Barons were of Norman/French descent.
To read this in full, please download the PDF below:
The Relevance of Magna Carta
October 17, 2011
Magna Carta Dinner
796 years ago tomorrow a reluctant, but resigned, and most definitely scheming King John was brought to Runnymede to put his seal to the Great Charter of Liberty – Magna Carta. John might have acceded to the Barons’ demands; he plainly had no intention of sticking to the bargain. Once at a safe distance from Runnymede he was urging Pope Innocent III to declare it void. The Pope agreed to John’s request, and on 24 August 1215, a mere ten weeks after its sealing, the Magna Carta was declared null and void by a Papal Bull.
And there its place in history may well have stopped. But, fifteen months later, after first facing a Baronial war, and then losing the royal treasury in the Wash, John fell victim to a bad dose of dysentery. And on 18 October 1216 he died, to be succeeded by his son, the more devout, less intelligent, longer lasting, but equally ineffective Henry III. The redoubtable Earl Marshal, the new young King’s regent, rescued Magna Carta from its threatened obscurity, revising and reissuing it twice. When he came of age, Henry III also reissued it, as did his son, Edward I, when he became King in 1297. And it is Edward I’s version which remains on the statute books to this day.
This evening, we are here to remember the birth of the Magna Carta, in the Inner Temple, one of the principal historic homes of the common law, and in the City of London, that even longer established entity, and we have celebrated the event with a beautiful and moving evensong. So it seems appropriate to say a few words about the religious implications, the legal implications, and the City implications of the Great Charter. Now, even though the Magna Carta remains part of our law, not all of it is in force, thanks to our Victorian ancestors, who, in a fit of unromantic practicality, repealed the vast majority of its provisions in the painfully prosaic Statute Law Revision Act of 1863. There are three provisions which, even after a couple of later repeals, are left untouched: chapters 1, 9 and 29. Chapter 1 well encapsulates the Charter’s ecclesiastical significance. It states that
“…. the English church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished and its liberties unimpaired: and we wish it thus observed, which is evident from the fact that of our own free and spontaneous will, before the discord between us and our barons began, we conceded and confirmed, by our charter, freedom of elections, which is reputed of the greatest necessity and importance to the English church.”
Now there is some debate as to the extent to which the Charter had been composed by Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Recent research by David Carpenter confirms that, while his views were undoubtedly very influential on the drafting of the Great Charter, he may not have been involved in drafting most of its clauses. However, there can be little doubt but that he was the moving force behind chapter 1, which he probably was largely responsible for drafting.
No doubt Stephen Langton would have been very pleased to have seen that chapter included. However, it has been suggested that he would have felt profound and devout horror and disbelief, if, as a good Roman Catholic, who had enlisted the Pope’s support against John, he had been told that, little more than 300 years later, the English Church would no longer be part of the Roman Catholic confession. But I wonder. As David Carpenter says, chapter 1 records a “desire to set the church free”. And Langton was keen to reduce the powers of the Pope over the English church, securing the removal from England of the papal legate, Pandulph, in 1221 five years after John’s death, and securing other rights for the English church from Innocent III’s successor, Honorius III. So maybe in chapter 1 of the Magna Carta, we can detect the first little breeze which in 300 years grew into Henry VIII’s storm out of which developed the independent Church of England.
Apart from having had his way in a number of respects over two Kings and two Popes, Langton spent 25 years teaching at the University of Paris – a great European – and wrote many books. He is also credited with having divided the books of the Bible up into their present chapters and to have composed the famous medieval sequence, Veni, Sanctus Spiritus. So Langton was a pretty formidable character – I see him as something of a 12th century Sir Robert Worcester, the deputy chair and effective chief executive of the Magna Carta Trust.
But, for present purposes, as I have said, even if Langton did not actually write much of the Magna Carta, he was its moving spirit. He had railed against “the avarice…of modern kings, who collect treasure not in order that they may sustain necessity but to satiate their cupidity”.
And, as we have all very recently been reminded, Archbishops of Canterbury have a habit of getting involved in such issues on behalf of what they see as the unfairly oppressed people. In 1215, Langton may have agreed with the sentiment expressed by his successor nearly 800 years later in this week’s New Statesman that “the tectonic plates of British … politics are shifting”, although I doubt that he would have known much about tectonic plates or the New Statesman, both of which came first only came to anyone’s attention in the 20th century.
Whatever may have been his views about the poor, there was no doubt about Langton’s commitment to the rule of law. As his biographer, J W Baldwin, said in his work on Langton, ‘the absence of the judicial process became his principle justification for political resistance.” Which brings us to the second and most famous of the three surviving chapters of the Charter, chapter 29:
“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 judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. To no-one will we sell or deny or delay right or justice.”
Stephen Langton was one of the three great men involved with the sealing of the Magna Carta. The other two were Earl Marshal and Hubert de Burgh. On the death of John, Henry III was only nine years old, and they were appointed joint regents. The country was in turmoil because the barons and John had been at war after the revocation of the Magna Carta, and the French army had invaded England. Marshall (who is appropriately for our celebration today buried in Temple Church) saved the day by reissuing the Magna Carta, thereby regaining significant popularity for the monarchy, causing the English army to re-form and drive the French invaders out. He was a great warrior and commanded an army which defeated the French at Lincoln – the famous “Faire of Lincoln” – described as one of three crucial English battles in the past millennium – the other two being Hastings and the Battle of Britain.
Marshall died shortly after that, leaving de Burgh as the sole regent. He was described as the Chief Justiciar, which meant that he was like the Prime Minister and Lord Chief Justice rolled into one. He also was a pretty successful general defeating a French army at Dover. Like Marshall, he reissued the Magna Carta, or got Henry to do so, and thereby achieved popular support for the Government. So, even a few years after it first seeing the light of day, Magna Carta had become a popular symbol of freedom.
And I have no doubt whatever that it was chapter 29 which above all other provisions made the Great Charter so popular.
We perhaps can properly understand its global significance if we turn to the 1354 version, an even later revision. In 1354 Edward III, John’s great great grandson, got in on the act and reaffirmed Magna Carta. His version had chapter 29 in this terms,
“… no man of what estate or condition that he be, shall be put out of land or tenement, nor taken, nor imprisoned, nor disinherited, nor put to death, without being brought in answer by due process of law.”
Due process of law is of course shorthand for the ‘lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. To no-one will we sell or deny or delay right or justice.’ As Chief Justice Coke, a former Treasurer of this Inn and the great early 17th century common lawyer, put it, was a declaratory statement of the Common law3.
Due process, was one of very few common law principles which was elevated into a constitutional right in the Constitution of the United States, through the 5th and 14th amendments to the Constitution. As with many things James Madison, forefather of the US Constitution and the original draftsman of the Bill of Rights, was responsible for transforming a principle articulated in a document sealed in a field in Surrey some 550 years earlier into a fundamental aspect of American political and legal life. And what is true of America is as true of the countries of the Commonwealth, and all liberal democracies, as is so well recorded in the Evensong programme this evening.
It is not just something of historical significance. As Chief Justice Coke, a former Treasurer of this Inn put it, Magna Carta established that the ‘Common lawes of the the old law of England.”
Realme should by no meanes be delayed for the law is the surest sanctuary, that a man can take, and the strongest fortresse to protect the weakest of all4’. It is therefore a powerful symbol that no power in the State is, or should be, above the law.
And talking of this Inn, the third of the three surviving chapters guarantees all the ancient liberties and customs of the City of London, where we are this evening. Despite the dramatic reduction in the international power of this country over the past century, London still remains the, or at least one of the two, premier financial centres of the world. The resulting international prestige and the economic benefit which this country enjoys is self-evident, and can therefore fairly be traced back to chapter 9 of the Magna Carta.
Well, my Lords, Ladies and gentlemen, the Magna Carta, even reduced to three provisions, has it all: God Mammon and the rule of law. What more could you want?
October 13, 2011
Magna Carta
Back from a short break, I thought I should follow up on the Magna Carta celebrations. Following a very nice mention of our Kubrick exhibition in the Guardian on the 9th June, the 11th-13th June was a busy weekend in St Albans celebrating the Magna Carta, as mentioned in a previous post. The celebrations started the run-up to the 800th anniversary, to be celebrated nationally in 2015.[ Coverage of the celebrations]
Why is all this important? Well there is much thought going on in a range of places and think tanks extending well beyond the coalition government’s notion of ‘big society’ to widespread coverage of co-production and societal change and potential adjustments to the constitutional settlement, including electoral reform. These are important changes which need to be based upon consultation and understanding in the wider community. The run up to the 800th anniversary celebrations provide a useful focus for such thought and I’d therefore like to set out what we did in St Albans.
Despite the fact that Lord Tom Bingham was unable to attend to deliver his talk on the Magna Carta due to illness, the lecture still took place, read authoritatively by Judge Michael Baker. This can be summarised as follows:
The Magna Carta is effective because of the historical impact of what is written within it rather than the detail itself. The result has been the rule of law, which can (and must) be expressed in the form of straightforward principles. The problems of today are not limited to national boundaries and the challenge for the rule of law will be whether states, as much as monarchs, accept that they are subject to the law.
The second major event was a concert at St Albans Cathedral, which showed what can be done by a local orchestra with a bit of encouragement. The St Albans Symphony Orchestra is a very proficient pro-am orchestra, which had worked hard on the programme and had included some brass players from the Royal Academy of Music for Copeland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, and two professional singers plus the RAM players for a fantastic rendition of Mahler’s second symphony, The Resurrection. The European premier of a little known piece by Howard Hanson appeared between these two pieces. Entitled Song of Human Rights, it sets to music elements of the declaration of Human Rights and to our knowledge has had only one or two performances in the US.
The formal celebration on Sunday 13th consisted of a procession by members of the judiciary, representatives from the charter towns and the Magna Carta trust, led by Sir Robert Worcester, to a service of celebration and thanksgiving in St Albans Cathedral, with a fascinating sermon by Rev. Nick Holtam, vicar of St Martin in the fields. Nick argued that the church, like all human endeavours, must subject itself to the rule of law.
The weekend also featured a range of events designed to engage the whole community, including an art show by the local FE college a range of community events including hands-on mediaeval displays, an open day in the old courtroom and an exhibition by the Museum service which begins their run-up to a national level exhibition in 2015.
Over the next few weeks we will review the events and start working on our part of the national celebrations, details of which will appear on the Magna Carta Trust website. We’ll be working with the Magna Carta trust the Ministry of Justice, the National Trust and the other Charter Towns, to bring together a five year programme of events and activities which I hope will provide a useful focus for further thought and activity.
June 27, 2010
Daniel Goodwin
Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest
Welcome message from the Dean:
“Lincoln Cathedral is one of the finest gothic buildings in Europe. Here you will find information about its past history, its present activities and our hopes for its future.
I hope you will come and visit Lincoln Cathedral to discover its wonders for yourself and receive a blessing.”
– The Very Reverend Philip Buckler
(Dean of Lincoln)
Among the rich treasures in the archives of Lincoln Cathedral, none is so celebrated as the Magna Carta of 1215. Yet when King John and the rebel barons faced each other at Runnymede on 15 June 1215, neither side can have realised that the written truce they agreed on that day would ultimately achieve iconic status as a charter of liberties for nations across the world. There was deep distrust in both camps, and it was clear to many that the king had every intention of ditching the truce as soon as he could possibly do so.
But this was in the future. As soon as the agreement was concluded, its clauses were written out in a formal charter, and copies were made for distribution across the land. Of these copies, only four survive: two in the British Library, one at Salisbury and the document in Lincoln. The Lincoln copy is the only one of the four known – through its endorsement Lincolnia – to be in its original location.
Within a few weeks of Runnymede, King John repudiated the charter and fought back vigorously against his baronial opponents. His death in October 1216 dramatically changed the situation. The rebels now found themselves fighting against John’s nine-year old son, Henry III, whose guardians took the unexpected move of reissuing Magna Carta, neatly wrong-footing the barons, some of whom crossed over to the king’s side. The civil war culminated in the siege and battle of Lincoln in May 1217, when many of the rebels were captured.
At a council held in the autumn of 1217 Magna Carta was reissued for a second time. On this occasion the clauses dealing with the administration of the royal forests were expanded and embodied in a second document, the Charter of the Forest. Only two copies of this second charter survive, one of them again in the archives of Lincoln Cathedral.
Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest did not in themselves solve the disputes between Crown and people, but throughout the remainder of the 13th century every time the king appeared to be pushing his authority to the limit the cry went up for the reissue of the charters, and by the end of the century they had been enshrined in the law of the land.
Although the majority of the clauses of Magna Carta were concerned with short-term disputes – the removal of foreign officials from government, the regulation of feudal payments – two of its clauses were of more general effect. These laid down that no free man was to be imprisoned expect by the judgement of his equals or by the law of the land, and that the king was not to deny, or to sell, justice. It is these two clauses above all that have ensured for Magna Carta its iconic status as a charter of liberties.
The global significance of Magna Carta has now been recognised by the award of Memory of the World status by UNESCO. An ongoing programme of conservation monitoring is in place to ensure the preservation of this outstanding document for the benefit of future generations.
Constitutional Relevance of Magna Carta in the 21st Century.
Thank you Lord Neuberger
I am delighted to be here today at the launch of a programme of celebrations culminating in the 800th year of the Magna Carta in 2015. I hope they will reignite interest and enthusiasm for one of the greatest events in British history and one of the great developments in the universal history of law and ideas, reflected in the fact that the monument on which I stand now was the gift of the American Bar Association for the 750th anniversary celebration.
I am grateful to the members of the Magna Carta Trust, to Runnymede Council, and to everyone involved in arranging this event today.
Why, apart from historical and dramatic interest, is it so important that we continue to remember what could be represented as an 800 year-old quarrel between an autocratic king who believed that he had authority from God to rule exactly as he liked, and a set of his barons who represented no-one but themselves and their own local and class interests? Why is it that we are gathered here today to remember the peace treaty that arose from that quarrel, so soon to be repudiated by the King and the Pope, and to celebrate its importance?
After all, only two chapters of Magna Carta now remain on the statute book.
When we read those two chapters, we have our answer:
39. No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.
40. To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.
Of course, the reason why we should remember Magna Carta and celebrate it is that it began the process that would define the limits of what the state can and cannot do, and it began to chart the boundaries of the relationship between the state and the individual.
That’s a process that is still under way, and is a perennial challenge for governments, most especially for democratic governments.
All states, even the most democratic, have a natural tendency to accumulate more power than they need, and to impose more restrictions than are strictly and sensibly necessary. But the answer to every problem is not a new law; and the answer to every risk is not a new restriction.
If laws become too numerous, or intrude too deeply and needlessly into our private lives, then it may be necessary to review and even unmake laws previously thought useful.
One of the key themes in the programme for Government which we set out after the general election was the need to roll back the power of the state. We said in our Coalition Programme for Government:
We believe that the State has become too authoritarian, and that over the past decade it has abused and eroded fundamental human freedoms and historic civil liberties. We need to restore the rights of individuals in the face of encroaching state power, in keeping with Britain’s tradition of freedom and fairness.
We are putting that promise into effect. Since the General Election we have taken steps to end the proliferation of unnecessary new offences, and have introduced a bill to scrap ID cards. In addition we have announced a review of Counter Terrorism powers, published guidelines for our security forces on the interrogation of detainees held by other countries, and commissioned an inquiry into whether the UK has been implicated in the improper treatment of detainees.
For me personally, in my role as Lord Chancellor, Magna Carta has particular resonance. In a sense, the Department for which I have responsibility is the living embodiment of Magna Carta. The legal system puts the principles of justice and the rule of law into practical effect, and it is my job to make sure that the system works efficiently and effectively at all times. On 14 May this year, I took my oath as Lord Chancellor at the Royal Courts of Justice, and then before Her Majesty the Queen. The words of that oath are:
“I …do swear that in the office of Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain I will respect the rule of law, defend the independence of the judiciary and discharge my duty to ensure the provision of resources for the efficient and effective support of the courts for which I am responsible..”
The words of that oath resonate with those of Chapter 40 of Magna Carta that I quoted earlier:
To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.
How best to do that is a challenge that we still wrestle with today, and every day:
How do we balance the needs of people who are less well off to access the justice system and get fair treatment in the courts against what the state can practically afford – especially in times when money is scarce and we need to reduce expenditure?
How do we ensure that justice is delivered speedily and accessibly – so that trials do not go on too long, and the system is not clogged up by bureaucratic processes that add nothing to the delivery of justice, and may actually impede it?
How far should the emergencies of history, the needs of national security and public safety, impact on the process of justice?
Magna Carta was not an end in itself, but a beginning, and those who drafted it, and took the considerable risk of placing it before King John here at Runnymede, acknowledged that.
As I have outlined, even today, its promises, which no fair-minded person would disagree with, still present a challenge to those of us entrusted with the duty and the privilege of administering the justice system.
The words from Magna Carta which I quoted earlier are emblazoned on the glass doors leading into the library of the new Supreme Court. Anyone can walk in and see them. They remind us that, where justice is concerned, the principles of Magna Carta are a reference to which we should always return to ensure that we are proceeding in the right direction.
Lord Chancellor
Delighted to be here today at the launch of a programme of celebrations culminating in the 800th year of the Magna Carta in 2015. I hope they will reignite interest and enthusiasm for one of the greatest events in British history and one of the great developments in the universal history of law and ideas, reflected in the fact that the very monument on which I stand now was the gift of the American Bar Association for the 750th anniversary celebration.
I am grateful to the members of the Magna Carta Trust, to Runnymede Council, and to everyone involved in arranging this event today.
Why, apart from historical and dramatic interest, is it so important that we continue to remember what could be represented as an 800 year-old quarrel between an autocratic king who believed that he had authority from God to rule exactly as he liked, and a set of his barons who represented no-one but themselves and their own local and class interests? Why is it that we are gathered here today to remember the peace treaty that arose from that quarrel, so soon to be repudiated by the King and the Pope, and to celebrate its importance?
After all, only two chapters of Magna Carta now remain on the statute book.
When we read those two chapters, we have our answer:
39. No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.
40. To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.
Of course, the reason why we should remember Magna Carta and celebrate it is that it began the process that would define the limits of what the state can and cannot do, and it began to chart the boundaries of the relationship between the state and the individual.
That’s a process that is still under way, and is a perennial challenge for governments, most especially for democratic governments.
All states, even the most democratic, have a natural tendency to accumulate more power than they need, and to impose more restrictions than are strictly and sensibly necessary. But the answer to every problem is not a new law; and the answer to every risk is not a new restriction.
If laws become too numerous, or intrude too deeply and needlessly into our private lives, then it may be necessary to review and even unmake laws previously thought useful.
One of the key themes in the programme for Government which we set out after the general election was the need to roll back the power of the state. We said in our Coalition Programme for Government:
We believe that the State has become too authoritarian, and that over the past decade it has abused and eroded fundamental human freedoms and historic civil liberties. We need to restore the rights of individuals in the face of encroaching state power, in keeping with Britain’s tradition of freedom and fairness.
We are putting that promise into effect. Since the General Election we have taken steps to end the proliferation of unnecessary new offences, and have introduced a bill to scrap ID cards. In addition we have announced a review of Counter Terrorism powers, published guidelines for our security forces on the interrogation of detainees held by other countries, and commissioned an inquiry into whether the UK has been implicated in the improper treatment of detainees.
For me personally, in my role as Lord Chancellor, Magna Carta has particular resonance. In a sense, the Department for which I have responsibility is the living embodiment of Magna Carta. The legal system puts the principles of justice and the rule of law into practical effect, and it is my job to make sure that the system works efficiently and effectively at all times. On 14 May this year, I took my oath as Lord Chancellor at the Royal Courts of Justice, and then before Her Majesty the Queen. The words of that oath are:
“I …do swear that in the office of Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain I will respect the rule of law, defend the independence of the judiciary and discharge my duty to ensure the provision of resources for the efficient and effective support of the courts for which I am responsible..”
The words of that oath resonate with those of Chapter 40 of Magna Carta that I quoted earlier:
To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.
How best to do that is a challenge that we still wrestle with today, and every day:
How do we balance the needs of people who are less well off to access the justice system and get fair treatment in the courts against what the state can practically afford – especially in times when money is scarce and we need to reduce expenditure?
What is the fairest and most efficient way of reaching a decision in court? Is it always by a jury?
How do we ensure that justice is delivered speedily and accessibly – so that trials do not go on too long, and the system is not clogged up by bureaucratic processes that add nothing to the delivery of justice, and may actually impede it?
How far should the emergencies of history, the needs of national security and public safety, impact on the process of justice?
Magna Carta was not an end in itself, but a beginning, and those who drafted it, and took the considerable risk of placing it before King John here at Runnymede, acknowledged that, as did their immediate successors. King John’s son, Henry III, reintroduced another version of the Magna Carta, the Great Charter, the year after the death of his father, and so on through the 12th Century until finally in 1297 its articles were brought into English law.
As I have outlined, even today, its promises, which no fair-minded person would disagree with, still present a challenge to those of us entrusted with the duty and the privilege of administering the justice system.
The words from Magna Carta which I quoted earlier are emblazoned on the glass doors leading into the library of the new Supreme Court. Anyone can walk in and see them. They remind us that, where justice is concerned, the principles of Magna Carta are a reference to which we should always return to ensure that we are proceeding in the right direction.
Relevance of Magna Carta to Human Rights in the 21st Century
Thank you My Lord
I would like to add my own thanks to Ken’s – first, to you Lord Neuberger who, as the Master of the Rolls, chair the Magna Carta Trust, as did your illustrious predecessors Lords Clarke, Phillips, Woolf and the much missed Lords Denning and Bingham. And my thanks also go to the Magna Carta Trustees, to Runnymede Council, and to everyone involved in arranging this event today.
I’m pleased to be here in my role as Minister for civil liberties and human rights, because as well as being an enthusiast for civil liberties and human rights, I’m also a Magna Carta enthusiast.
The Lord Chancellor has reminded us that Magna Carta was not merely the outcome of a struggle between the King and the Barons. It involved the people as well, and it provided the basic principles on which the British state has been governed for nearly 800 years.
…that the power of the state is not absolute;
…that whoever governs the state must obey the law;
…and that whoever governs the state must take account of the views of those who are governed.
Magna Carta has been called the most influential secular document in the history of the world.
Its importance lies not just in the rights and liberties it sets out – though those are tremendously important.
But it also records an agreement by an all-powerful king who acknowledged no superior on earth, whose word was law, that he could no longer do just as he liked; that he could no longer rule without legal restraint.
The promises Magna Carta contains are as important today as they were in 1215. We only need to watch the TV news, or read the newspapers, to know that even today they are still to be realised in many parts of the world.
Magna Carta summed up ancient liberties and provided a springboard for modern ones. Those included the principle of habeas corpus, developed in the 17th Century – that no one, not just barons, could be imprisoned unlawfully. And that in turn led on to the Bill of Rights of 1689, which reflected long established traditions of personal liberty and freedom from state oppression.
Of course, even in these islands, we have taken several different paths to the realization of these liberties: Magna Carta’s specific articles did not then apply in Scotland where the struggle for freedom took its own distinctive path; habeas corpus was first applied in Ireland only in the 18th Century, as your guest the Irish Attorney General, here with us today, will know; and its equivalents were introduced in Scotland only in the 19th Century.
However, whether they came sooner or later, what all of these developments had in common, from Magna Carta onwards, was a sensible suspicion of state power. And that is always a suspicion worth cultivating in a healthy democracy.
Ever since the principles of good government were established in the UK, we have retained a leading position in the world in defining the relationship between the power of state and the freedom of the individual.
The commitment to liberty and the freedom of the individual was one of the cornerstones of the Coalition’s programme for government.
In that programme, we made very clear our uncompromising commitment to human rights and to the European Convention on Human Rights.
That should come as no surprise to anyone. 60 years ago, at the end of the Second World War, Winston Churchill called for “a Charter of Human Rights, guarded by freedom and sustained by law” to ensure that the atrocities and mass murder committed by totalitarian states before and during the War would never be repeated.
So let’s be clear. Human rights are not a foreign import. They are part of our national DNA, and have been since 1215, and even centuries before.
We want people in Britain to understand their rights and liberties so that we are all equipped to assert our own personal freedoms and can help build a fairer society.
And we also want to make sure that no-one in authority is tempted to use human rights wrongly as an excuse for inaction or for silly decisions.
Because in almost all cases the human rights of any individual can and should be balanced in a common-sense way against the rights of others and the wider needs of society.
This is as true now as when Magna Carta was sealed. No-one said that King John could not govern, or uphold the interests of the state; only that he had to treat his subjects in a reasonable way, within the law.
We celebrate Magna Carta today because it is our first great assertion of the rights of the individual against the power of the state – the first great affirmation of the rule of law as the basis of government.
We should cherish that heritage, and celebrate the gift that those who framed and enforced the Magna Carta have given to us.
It’s a rare and special gift. Let’s enjoy it.
50th Anniversary Dinner for the Magna Carta Trust
I am delighted to have been asked to speak to you this evening. This is an event which marks a number of important themes. As we have heard, we celebrate a major anniversary – the 50th anniversary of the Magna Carta Trust, and we look forward to the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta itself in 2015. This gives us an opportunity to mark again the importance of respect for the rule of law, of which Magna Carta is a potent symbol and embodiment, and which is as important today as it was in the 13th century. It is also an opportunity to recognise the support and generosity of the American Bar Association and to celebrate the heritage and the values which we as British and American lawyers have in common.
Not all our citizens are as conscious of this heritage as they might be. We have a television quiz show (I understand) called The Biggest Game in Town. Recently a contestant on that show was asked: “What was signed to bring World War I to an end in 1918?” You can probably guess I’m about to tell you that the contestant gave the answer “Magna Carta”. So the 800th anniversary celebrations will have to include some awareness raising.
To read this in full, download the PDF below:
50th Anniversary Dinner for the Magna Carta Trust
The Principles of Magna Carta: Under threat after 790 years of evolution?
Today is the very anniversary of the sealing of the Magna Carta, that great charter which laid down the basis for English common law, now spread throughout the world. Magna Carta gave protection of law against despotism by kings and their cronies, which has been challenged by self-appointed and elective dictatorships over centuries, but (mostly) upheld by both public opinion and legal testing over centuries, and which survives even today, 790 years later.
I take much pride and not a little pleasure being asked to attend this magnificent Cathedral this evening to deliver the inaugural Magna Carta/USA Week lecture. I do so for many reasons. One, historic. A short history compared to 790 years of English history since the barons met with King John at Runnymede, only 48 in my case.
In 1957 I first visited the country of my ancestors, England. My first visit to any museum, gallery or library on that occasion was to the British Museum to gaze with awe at their copy of the Magna Carta, my reason for our visit.
When I decided to come here to live in January 1969, my first weekend here with my family, we made a pilgrimage to Runnymede to visit the site of the signing of the Magna Carta.
I am still an American, and take pride and not a little pleasure in still claiming citizenship of the country of my birth. But I also take pride and a great deal of pleasure in now being able to claim British, that is dual, citizenship here, and great pride and pleasure of just last week being invested by Her Majesty as a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (KBE). And, both as Chairman of the Pilgrims, which has as its only object the “Furtherance of Anglo-American relations” I can think of no greater link between our two countries, my two countries, than the Magna Carta.
And as Co-Chairman of the British Committee of the Jamestown 2007 Quadricentennial celebration, I’m as excited as can be about your tentative plans to tour American with the Lincoln Magna Carta starting in 2007.
Magna Carta: why celebrate?
The answer to my question depends on many things. I shall not ask or attempt to answer – why celebrate anything at all? But in this case it’s worth asking what there has been celebrated, when, where and by whom? and what, if anything, there is to celebrate now. For Magna Carta 1215 is a date for all of us (or was until recently). Such documents make prosaic reading. This is the only one as far as I know to have attracted serious music – Kurt Weill’s Ballad of Magna Carta composed for the CBS radio programme The Pursuit of Happiness in 1940. The coincidence of composer, topic, programme and date is a poignant reminder of the Charter’s enduring fame.
To read this in full, download the PDF below:
Magna Carta: Why Celebrate?
From Magna Carta to Atlantic Charter: The Constitutional Foundations of the Special Relationship
The purpose of this series of lectures is to explore the relations between the United States of America and the continent of Europe including its offshore islands of which its own civilization is to a large extent an offshoot. It must be regarded as a timely one since the intimacy of the transatlantic relationship is at one of its low points. It is not that Europe rejects America or American influence – indeed anti-Americanism so prominent in some political and intellectual quarters a generation ago is now in decline. And this development must owe something to the ending of what we call the “Cold War”. But the relaxation of international tensions has had the opposite effect in the United States. There seems general agreement that Europe attracts much less American attention than was formerly the case, whether we judge it by the lack of interest in its fortunes displayed in the media or by declining concern with European history at all levels in the educational process, or the indifference of American youth to the chances of securing a direct acquaintance with countries from which their families originally came.
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From Magna Carta to Atlantic Charter
Magna Carta: The St. Albans Dimension
When you were kind enough to ask me to speak this evening I was Master of the Rolls and as such ex officio Chairman of the Magna Carta Trust. The Magna Carta Trust is a charitable body devoted to increasing knowledge of and promulgating to the ideas enshrined in the Great Charter of 1215. Central to the constitution and functioning of the Trust are what are known as the five charter towns, each of which supplies a trustee (its Lord Mayor or Mayor for the time being) and gives much-valued financial support. The five charter towns in alphabetical order, Bury St. Edmunds, Canterbury, London, Runnymede and St. Albans. The association of some of these towns with Magna Carta is more obvious than in the case of some others.
To read this in full, download the PDF below:
Magna Carta: The St. Albans Dimension
July 26, 2011
Kevin Rudd’s 2011 Magna Carta Lecture
2011 Magna Carta Lecture, hosted by the British High Commission, at the Adelaide Town Hall
The Hon Kevin Rudd MP, Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, 26 July 2011
We date this great document the Magna Carta to a famous gathering at Runnymede on the Thames in June 1215.
The English aristocracy met with the English King to deal with some ancient grievances.
As others have observed, it was not an Act of Parliament.
There was no Parliament.
It was not part of any Constitution.
There was no constitutional order to speak of.
It simply became known as the Magna Carta.
To read the full transcript of the speech, click here.
January 28, 2011
Professor Nicholas Vincent, “Magna Carta in the 21st Century: The View from Canterbury”, Chancellor’s Lecture, University of Kent
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28 January 2011, Professor Nicholas Vincent, “Magna Carta in the 21st Century: The View from Canterbury”, Chancellor’s Lecture, University of Kent
MC Most Famous Document in English, perhaps World History
Cornerstone of Liberties; Bulwark of the Constitution
Already so well known in Seventeenth Century that mocked by Oliver Cromwell as Magna Farta: according to Lord Clarendon, ‘When (the judges) with all humility mentioned the law, and Magna Charta, Cromwell told them their Magna Farta should not control his actions…’
Want to approach it today via two themes: Firstly Magna Carta viewed not as a product of twelfth and thirteenth century government, as a peace treaty between King and barons, but as an artifact and object still with us in the twenty first century. Secondly, I want to pinpoint the particular significance that Canterbury and Kent played both in the issue of the charter in 1215 and for its subsequent acceptance into English law
June 11, 2010
Rt Hon Lord Bingham, “Magna Carta 1215”, St Albans Cathedral
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11 June 2010, Rt Hon Lord Bingham, “Magna Carta 1215”, St Albans Cathedral
The Great Charter, solemnly executed by King John and the Barons on 15 June at Runnymede, in the meadows outside Windsor, is not a customer-friendly document. There is no illumination or decoration such as beautify the Book of Kells or the Lindisfarne Gospels. The text, densely written in characters which would be small on a bill of lading or a charterparty, defies transliteration by all but the most expert; and even when deciphered the text, in Latin, will call for translation if it is to make sense to most of us. And the amount of sense it makes is limited. If we search the document for resonant statements of democratic principle, such as characterise the American Declaration of Independence or the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen of 1789, we are largely disappointed. Many of the clauses are of local, particular or feudal interest only, about as interesting as our rules for recycling rubbish are likely to be to our descendants 800 years from now. Yet this yellowing parchment, soon to celebrate its 800th birthday, can plausibly claim to be the most influential secular document in the history of the world. In the cities and towns which helped to give it birth, St. Albans notable among them, the source of Magna Carta’s enduring influence deserves in particular, to be explored.
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