17 October 2006
Magna Charta: It’s not just for terrorists anymore
10:15 AM
On Friday evening, at what you might call a symposium (in the literal sense of the word), I was reminded of the recent furor over the President’s request for a bill that would clarify the provisions of Geneva, when one of the other attendees and I got into a brief side-bar argument about the justification of the American Revolution. He was taking the position that the rebellion was wrong. He was more than a little skeptical when I informed him that the colonists asserted a right, recognized by the British Constitution going back to—you guessed it—Magna Charta. And of course, I’ve only read Magna Charta; I haven’t memorized it. So I couldn’t exactly quote him chapter and verse. But our brief exchange did remind me of the reference to Magna Charta in recent weeks, so I have gone back and looked up a few things.
Here, with reference to the American colonists’ rebellion, is Clause 61:
(61) SINCE WE HAVE GRANTED ALL THESE THINGS for God, for the better ordering of our kingdom, and to allay the discord that has arisen between us and our barons, and since we desire that they shall be enjoyed in their entirety, with lasting strength, for ever, we give and grant to the barons the following security:
The barons shall elect twenty-five of their number to keep, and cause to be observed with all their might, the peace and liberties granted and confirmed to them by this charter.
If we, our chief justice, our officials, or any of our servants offend in any respect against any man, or transgress any of the articles of the peace or of this security, and the offence is made known to four of the said twenty-five barons, they shall come to us - or in our absence from the kingdom to the chief justice - to declare it and claim immediate redress. If we, or in our absence abroad the chief justice, make no redress within forty days, reckoning from the day on which the offence was declared to us or to him, the four barons shall refer the matter to the rest of the twenty-five barons, who may distrain upon and assail us in every way possible, with the support of the whole community of the land, by seizing our castles, lands, possessions, or anything else saving only our own person and those of the queen and our children, until they have secured such redress as they have determined upon. Having secured the redress, they may then resume their normal obedience to us.
Any man who so desires may take an oath to obey the commands of the twenty-five barons for the achievement of these ends, and to join with them in assailing us to the utmost of his power. We give public and free permission to take this oath to any man who so desires, and at no time will we prohibit any man from taking it. Indeed, we will compel any of our subjects who are unwilling to take it to swear it at our command (emphasis mine).
To generalize a bit, the power and authority of the sovereign is not absolute. Abuses can be resisted with force of arms, provided, if you’ll note, that this ‘rebellion’ is led by competent authority. And in the case of Magna Charta, that competent authority were the twenty-five barons of the proto-parliament.
During the recent furor over the President’s request for a bill that would clarify for intelligence interrogators the meaning in Geneva of the proscriptions of torture, there were several references to the fact that many of the freedoms we enjoy (and ought to extend to our enemies) go back to Magna Charta. Denial of these rights, even to our sworn enemies, was to depart from our sacred tradition in a way that was tantamount to the President's declaring himself Emperor, or something like that.
I doubt many people have even read Magna Charta. (Yes, as a matter of fact, I have.)
I wonder whether those who were so quick to guarantee to our enemies protections going all the way back to Magna Charta will want to discuss the guarantee, in the same body of documents, of the right of rebellion against abuses by one’s own government. Now, if you’re one who, like me, is okay with the American Revolution, you’ve no problem with that. Fine.
But what about the American Civil War? Say what you will about slavery, but in this day and age, when it’s fashionable to talk about one group not imposing its morality on another, it’s a bit sticky. Besides, nothing logically prevents one saying that the South was wrong about slavery but correct about states’ rights. The former is a moral-ethical issue; the latter is a constitutional-legal issue. Being wrong about the former doesn’t make you wrong about the latter. And whatever arguments we wish to throw around (i.e., about whether states who freely join a union may freely leave), I’ll just bet we won’t hear any talk about how the right of rebellion—just like those precious rights we wish to extend to our enemies—is a glorious and sacred tradition that goes all the way back to Magna Charta. That’s the problem when politicians go all pedantic on us. They raise the specter of our supposedly departing from a 781 year old tradition in Anglo-Saxon law, but ‘forget’ another, less favorable tradition in that body of proto-constitutional law.
For that matter (for those who believe the United Nations is the seat of a unitary world government) what about ‘unilateral’ action? If the United Nations (our putative sovereign, on the view of some) won’t act pursuant to its own resolutions, leaving its member states effectively unprotected, then—honoring a tradition going all the way back to the glory days of Magna Charta—surely a state has the freedom (the obligation to its citizens) to ‘rebel’ against the UN’s ‘prohibition’ of ‘unilateral’ action and take that action itself.
Embedded in Magna Charta is the idea that the power of the sovereign is not absolute, and is to be limited. The sovereign agrees to these limitations upon his power and further agrees to be bound to those limitations, and held accountable, even to the use of force of arms on the part of his subjects in holding him accountable to abide by the laws. That sentiment—a desire for self-preservation—not rose-colored, wistful idealism is what is behind our freedoms. Magna Charta is not the product of minds who daydreamed a “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could teach the world to sing in three part harmony? ” document. It is the product of a wish to survive the abuses of predatory monarchs. The right of rebellion goes along with all those other rights we enjoy, at least as far as Magna Charta is concerned. Funny how politicians don’t really like to go there.
By the way, Charta’s protections extended only to the nobility. And it certainly would not have been thought applicable to England’s enemies. I wonder what the twenty-five barons of the proto-parliament would have done to an English monarch who even suggested such an asinine thing.
Here, with reference to the American colonists’ rebellion, is Clause 61:
(61) SINCE WE HAVE GRANTED ALL THESE THINGS for God, for the better ordering of our kingdom, and to allay the discord that has arisen between us and our barons, and since we desire that they shall be enjoyed in their entirety, with lasting strength, for ever, we give and grant to the barons the following security:
The barons shall elect twenty-five of their number to keep, and cause to be observed with all their might, the peace and liberties granted and confirmed to them by this charter.
If we, our chief justice, our officials, or any of our servants offend in any respect against any man, or transgress any of the articles of the peace or of this security, and the offence is made known to four of the said twenty-five barons, they shall come to us - or in our absence from the kingdom to the chief justice - to declare it and claim immediate redress. If we, or in our absence abroad the chief justice, make no redress within forty days, reckoning from the day on which the offence was declared to us or to him, the four barons shall refer the matter to the rest of the twenty-five barons, who may distrain upon and assail us in every way possible, with the support of the whole community of the land, by seizing our castles, lands, possessions, or anything else saving only our own person and those of the queen and our children, until they have secured such redress as they have determined upon. Having secured the redress, they may then resume their normal obedience to us.
Any man who so desires may take an oath to obey the commands of the twenty-five barons for the achievement of these ends, and to join with them in assailing us to the utmost of his power. We give public and free permission to take this oath to any man who so desires, and at no time will we prohibit any man from taking it. Indeed, we will compel any of our subjects who are unwilling to take it to swear it at our command (emphasis mine).
To generalize a bit, the power and authority of the sovereign is not absolute. Abuses can be resisted with force of arms, provided, if you’ll note, that this ‘rebellion’ is led by competent authority. And in the case of Magna Charta, that competent authority were the twenty-five barons of the proto-parliament.
During the recent furor over the President’s request for a bill that would clarify for intelligence interrogators the meaning in Geneva of the proscriptions of torture, there were several references to the fact that many of the freedoms we enjoy (and ought to extend to our enemies) go back to Magna Charta. Denial of these rights, even to our sworn enemies, was to depart from our sacred tradition in a way that was tantamount to the President's declaring himself Emperor, or something like that.
I doubt many people have even read Magna Charta. (Yes, as a matter of fact, I have.)
I wonder whether those who were so quick to guarantee to our enemies protections going all the way back to Magna Charta will want to discuss the guarantee, in the same body of documents, of the right of rebellion against abuses by one’s own government. Now, if you’re one who, like me, is okay with the American Revolution, you’ve no problem with that. Fine.
But what about the American Civil War? Say what you will about slavery, but in this day and age, when it’s fashionable to talk about one group not imposing its morality on another, it’s a bit sticky. Besides, nothing logically prevents one saying that the South was wrong about slavery but correct about states’ rights. The former is a moral-ethical issue; the latter is a constitutional-legal issue. Being wrong about the former doesn’t make you wrong about the latter. And whatever arguments we wish to throw around (i.e., about whether states who freely join a union may freely leave), I’ll just bet we won’t hear any talk about how the right of rebellion—just like those precious rights we wish to extend to our enemies—is a glorious and sacred tradition that goes all the way back to Magna Charta. That’s the problem when politicians go all pedantic on us. They raise the specter of our supposedly departing from a 781 year old tradition in Anglo-Saxon law, but ‘forget’ another, less favorable tradition in that body of proto-constitutional law.
For that matter (for those who believe the United Nations is the seat of a unitary world government) what about ‘unilateral’ action? If the United Nations (our putative sovereign, on the view of some) won’t act pursuant to its own resolutions, leaving its member states effectively unprotected, then—honoring a tradition going all the way back to the glory days of Magna Charta—surely a state has the freedom (the obligation to its citizens) to ‘rebel’ against the UN’s ‘prohibition’ of ‘unilateral’ action and take that action itself.
Embedded in Magna Charta is the idea that the power of the sovereign is not absolute, and is to be limited. The sovereign agrees to these limitations upon his power and further agrees to be bound to those limitations, and held accountable, even to the use of force of arms on the part of his subjects in holding him accountable to abide by the laws. That sentiment—a desire for self-preservation—not rose-colored, wistful idealism is what is behind our freedoms. Magna Charta is not the product of minds who daydreamed a “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could teach the world to sing in three part harmony? ” document. It is the product of a wish to survive the abuses of predatory monarchs. The right of rebellion goes along with all those other rights we enjoy, at least as far as Magna Charta is concerned. Funny how politicians don’t really like to go there.
By the way, Charta’s protections extended only to the nobility. And it certainly would not have been thought applicable to England’s enemies. I wonder what the twenty-five barons of the proto-parliament would have done to an English monarch who even suggested such an asinine thing.
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About Me
- James Frank Solís
- Former soldier (USA). Graduate-level educated. Married 26 years. Texas ex-patriate. Ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church in America.
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