Transcripts For CSPAN3 Magna Carta And The Constitution 2024

CSPAN3 Magna Carta And The Constitution June 22, 2024

About both it and the constitution. The National Archives hosted this event to mark the 800th anniversary of the magna carta. It is about 90 minutes. Im the executive director of the constitutional project, we are an organization devoted to promote greater access to an understanding of u. S. Constitutional history. It is a pleasure to join the National Archives this evening to celebrate the 800th anniversary of the ceiling of the magna carta. Magna carta has left a profound legacy for law and culture around the world. To commemorate magna carta and its powerful ideas, like trial by jury and due process of law embodied in its text, weve assembled an Impressive Group of scholars to discuss magna cartas influence on american constitutionalism. Tonight will be joined by jennifer paxton, a medieval specialist from catholic universities in america the author of in the shadow of the great charter, who gave a wonderful lecture this afternoon. And bruce obriant, and magna carta expert from the university of mary washington. Tonights program will be live tweeted on the consulars twitter page, live streamed on the National Archives youtube page, and im told that cspan is also here with us this evening. I hope folks joining us at home and around the world will tune in online and on social media. With that, i now have the great privilege of welcoming to the stage our expert panelist as well as our distinguished monolayer moderator. Please join me in welcoming and then welcoming them in. [applause] julie with that, i hand the reins over to our moderator judge lambert. Judge lambert thank you, julie. As a pleasure to be here. 800 years ago, a group of barons forced king john to sign the magna carta, the idea that the kings capacity to kill and imprison should not be exercised at its whim, but that he should have explicit constraints. And that Neither Force nor detention should be used against a free man except in accordance with the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land. Thats the words from the 1215 version of the magna carta. You will hear a lot tonight about the impact magna carta has had in this country in both state constitutions and in the United States constitution. Since england never adopted a constitution, in some ways, the influence of magna carta is even greater in this country. Certainly the notions of due process of law, the right to jury trials have developed directly from magna carta, as well as separation of powers, principles, and tradition judicial decisionmaking on what law is. Some of this is really fascinating, historically. For example when the barons demanded a jury of their peers with magna carta, they certainly were not envisioning a jury of commenters, their peers were clearly other barons. So some of their notions would be a surprise to them if they were here 800 years later to know how we interpret a jury of your peers. To include mere commoners. But im a card has become a rallying cry for centuries now regarding with the law of the land requires. As we debate today current topics like whether the president can legally authorized drone strikes to kill american citizens, we hear citations for magna carta, even today in legal debates about the power of our president. As many of you know, there was a great ceremony today to celebrate his 800th anniversary, Queen Elizabeth was there, along with the archivist david verio who was there instead of here, im sorry to say. But not sorry for him, im sure he had a great time. Many of my colleagues, the president of the American Bar Association and other colleagues were there as well. I tell you one story, because when i was a student in law school, and last summer before i graduated from law school, i spent in europe traveling through europe and i decided i was in england that i would go to see where the magna carta had been signed, the original version in 1215. The American Bar Association actually put up the memorial that is they are, it was only put up in 1957. The actual memorial with a plaque was erected in 1957. Hate to admit, i was there in 1966, while i was still in law school, there was no pathway just in the middle of this field, so i hitchhiked up there i had a euro password traveling in europe, but it wasnt good for england. I had hitchhiked. I hitchhiked out and i had my suitcase with me, i was going to Stratford On Avon to see shakespeares production. And to go to the globe theater. I traipsed out there in the middle of this field at sign, and was somewhat dumbfounded there was more of a production to this whole scene. It was just in the middle of the field, a small memorial. I trekked back, and has a was getting back to go back to the highway, i start sliding downhill. It was pouring down buckets of rain, sort of like when you came in. I slid down the sill, my suitcase came down behind me and on top of me. I was a muddy mess. The time i got to the highway, no one would stop and take up this muddy mess. Eventually a lorry stopped and i was able to get back to Stratford On Avon. I have a vivid memory of this. Im really delighted to be able to dissipate in this program tonight. The New York Times headline yesterday read magna carta still posing a challenge at 800, in typical New York Times fashion theres also an opinion piece entitled stop revering magna carta. By law professor at the university of chicago. He decries some of the myths that have developed a dynamic part of. We will deal with some of those myths during the program tonight. The National Archives is a very special place to have a discussion about magna carta because, as you just heard, the 1297 version is on display here. I was in this room when David Rubenstein was honored by the National Archives by bringing in the only copy we have and for present and for presented to the archives so to be on display. The archivist introduced me to him that night, it was one of my great thrills of life to me one of our real american heroes, who is really doing something with the billion dollars he made to improve the life of all of us in this country. And certainly preserving the magna carta is one of our charges of freedom, and something great he is done for this country. I want to stop talking myself and get our illustrious panel. I will start as we do chronologically with asking us if they will give us a historical overview of the runup to what happened in 1215 and then jenny will talk more about the actual ceiling of the magna carta itself. Bruce thank you. As i was listening to your anecdote, it struck me that your experience and king johns were not so dissimilar. You could take some pleasure in that. You had some empathy for that side. I am, as julie said, a professor , but im also the lead and chair of Early English laws come a british statefunded project to publish, reedit, and translate all british law of to magna carta, including magna carta. Oftentimes people think here i dont blame them, that magna carta just brings from nowhere. Suddenly theres a medieval document that appears and its very important and theres not a lot of attention given to what came before. And also not a lot of attention given to what came after until he gets to the colonies. And then it takes on a vibrant kind of life. The texts we do in the project 150 of them, all legal texts that predate magna carta. Its a very vibrant legal culture going on in england up to magna carta. Magna carta from that perspective is just part of it. Its not something out of the blue. Its not something that is surprising is a legal text. A text for people trying to hash out what they think the law should be. Instead of taking you through the weeds of those text, which are fun and free, going to talk about something that leads up to magna carta which is quite important. And that is the relationship of monarchs to the law. Because magna carta itself is, i think, probably at its core a rejection of tyranny. It is a statement that kings do not have absolute power. That there are checks on Royal Authority and when world hader is bad, these should be invoked. As an old tradition not spelled out in magna carta, but an old tradition in english law. When you want to trace when monarchs started to feel compelled to put promises in writing to their subjects, that they will administer the law correctly, they will administer the law fairly, they want their judges to administer the law fairly, youre looking at the 10th century edgar, king into the 10th century, was a powerful king and nevertheless someone who makes concessions. One of them is they begin this practice of promising in his law codes to honor them, to honor the very laws and not be abusive, not be a bad thing. That practices followed by subsequent kings. Scandinavian kings, viking kings. An excellent creates probably a coronation oath, and knows that kings would take promising to respect the laws of the land. In his case, when he was made a promise as part of the deal by which he got england, was to honor the laws of edgar. Its a backward looking precedent, these are the old laws i wanted them. You can follow that hopping and skipping all the way up to magna carta, even over the Norman Conquest 1066, the dynasty to foreign is wrong. But william the conqueror fight the battle kills the king, harold, and takes over the kingdom. Its always a mistake to have a centralized government. They fall, and when they fall they fall very fast. For hundreds of years, scholars and tried to sort out what happened. One of the things i think is interesting in terms of magna carta is you have people taking a lot of pains to try and ensure that people feel comfortable that there has been a continuity of law and political power whether rightly or wrongly. They create a concept of the laws of edward the confessor. In each king after, from william on promises to honor those laws. Those of the laws of the last english king. They dont exist, there was no code issued by edward. With this notion that the golden age that produce laws that only wish kings that honor all english kings should honor is there. Kings putting themselves under the law. Hearing the law from the people and putting themselves under it. One aspect of magna carta is that. You have a king that john, who was put the document is from him that. The document is put under the law. And with a lot of safeguards in place in that first magna carta. The only other thing i will add and i will revisit this later when we talk about the common misunderstandings of magna carta , is that you should keep in mind, with all the legal texts its still very hard to know whether any of them is official as we would think of a law is official. Something that people would go to as a source or reference. Theres a lot of law floating around. You look at what happens to magna carta afterwards. People start to adjust, merge versions of it, its really very strange. I think we tend to see it as a document that appears, it has these rights, and it comes out of nowhere. There is a long lead up to it and theres a different context for understanding it. That should always read there when we are trying to interpret what it actually meant to people at the time. Judge lamberth thats great. Jenny, do you want to talk about how we did it . Jenny its one thing for kings to promise to follow the law theres another thing to do it through the whole rain. Reign. We come to king john, one of only two kings in english history never to have a successor named after him. Theres never been a john the second, and i can constantly predict there never will be. [laughter] jenny that name is definitely off the list. When they name a new prints, what are the names . Not john. There really are two proximate causes for magna carta. One is a foreignpolicy disaster. The other is the character of the king. I would argue without those two factors, you would not have had magna carta. The foreignpolicy disaster, bruce mentioned the Norman Conquest. With the Norman Conquest did was to make england a cross channel empire. They got england, theyve got land on the continent they still control. Back to normandy where william the conqueror came from. Over the course of the 12th century, they inspire the whole western seaboard of france. They own basically half of france, which is great for the english, not so good for the french. There is an expanding conflict between the french kingdom and the kings of england. It is exacerbated by the weird sort of futile situation between them, because the land in france that the english control, they are held of the french king. So the french king is actually the overlord of the english king. His capacity as duke of normandy, count of all june, etc. This is really a false position for two kings to be in. In regards to each other because the sovereignties conflict. But they havent sorted that out in the 12th and 13th centuries. So it leads to a standing conflict of interest between them. Theres fairly constant war between france and england in the french territories, that the list control. Theyre always going back and forth across the border. And so now we come to the reign of john. John takes the throne 1199, when richard the lion heart is killed in really a rather unimportant skirmish south of france in a territory that he controlled. You have john on the throne and the king of france has immediately going to try to take advantage of the relative instability of succession to see some land. They come to an agreement everything is going to be fine and then john gets married. And that screws everything up. It is one of the most disastrous marriages in english history. For a number of reasons. But one reason is because of whom the drive is who the bride is, and where she comes from. This is isabel, from a small territory in southwestern france, and the problem is that it adjoins the county of lamarche. And lamarche was ruled my family that were constantly rebelling against king john. John did not want the count of lamarche to marry isabella. They were engaged. He wanted to block that marriage because he feared that if these two territories were united there would be this big indigestible block of rebel territory in the heart of his french dominion. He doesnt want his marriage to go forward. So his solution is he marries the bride himself. He scopes then, takes the bride marries her himself, and oh by the way, they had been postponing this relationship, the count of lamarche and isabel, because the bride was 12 years old. The king marries her anyways. This might have been ok, if the king had compensated the count of lamarche for stealing his fiancee. But john was just the sort of guy not to do that. They would have been much better if he said im sorry, but here is some extra land, heres a payment, its all good. He didnt do that. He basically thumbed his nose at his own vassal, and that caused the count of lamarche to appeal to the king of france. Because, of course, the king of france is the overlord of both the count of lamarche and the king of england. So he appeals of the king of france, and the king of france has just been waiting for an opportunity to do something against king john. And here, this is delivered to him on a silver platter. Because, of course, john has violated the rights of his vassal in taking the fiancee without compensation. So the king of france confiscates the land. And he actually makes good on the confiscation by force of arms. He invades normandy and conquers it. Now, the king of england has lost all the land in france, lots of it. And particularly, the land that people actually care about normandy. This is a complete disaster. Kings of any kingdom are not supposed to lose land. If anything, you were supposed to increase it, not lose land. And now john is in a bind because he has to try and get the land back. He needs to pay for the reconquest, he cant pay for it because now he is not giving any revenue from the land anymore. He has to tax england unmercifully in order to pay for the effort to get the land of france back. He is now a vicious circle. The more he taxes england, the more they hate him. But he has to get the land back or he will lose face is king. It goes on like this for about 10 years. In 1214, he basically makes one last effort to recover the land in france. He gathers together a coalition of continental allies, in particular, his nephew who was a german nobleman, and he is going to do a pincher movement. His allies are going to come into france from the northeast. John is going to land in the south, on the coast, and then theyre going to meet up, head towards paris, and get the king of france. But it doesnt work. Because john is bottled up on the coast, he can never meet his allies. And now i has to go up against the king of france alone. And there is a battle between the king of france and this german ally, and the french win the battle. The battle all commentators will agree that there is pernicious straightline from their two runnymede. The barons of england are waiting on the sidelines to see if john is successful. If he is maybe they will forgive him all the other stuff is done. If hes not, they are done with him. This battle takes place in july of 1214, in the fall of 1214 the barons are already gathering together to talk about what to do about king john. And by the spring of that year, they are actively discussing some of the issues that end up in the draft of magna carta. So thats the Foreign Policy call for magna carta. But there is also a character called for magna carta, which is the fact that john was detested widely, by his barons. He was regarded as an trustworthy, vicious cruel. Just the sort of person you would have to extract promises from, because he didnt keep his word. He was basically wellknown for that. He was somebody who acted arbitrarily, one of the things he did to raise the money for this continual effort to recover land in france was to find people arbitrarily for offenses that sometimes were real and sometimes invented here it he would lend money to people and unrealistic amounts and then have the debt hover over them. People were always scared of what john would do. He was very unpredictable. Really, just the best example i think of the kind of cruelty the john engaged in he got into a dispute with one of his vassals and he actually had the wife and son of this vassal starved to death. When this was widely known. All the chroniclers of the time reported. It was widely known. That was the kind of thing he did. He also would go around to the castles of the barons and demand to sleep with their lives and daughters. Their wives and daughters. Th

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