"For me Magna Carta is an important part of the UK’s creation myth. Without knowing any of the detail of its provisions or its history, Magna Carta establishes the principle that Kings (or Prime Ministers) are subject to man-made law and to the judges who uphold it. The fact that the Charter itself may have been a cynical pact produced as a piece of short term expediency between a very small elite group of barons and a weakened king, and was probably entered into by King John under...
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"For me Magna Carta is an important part of the UK’s creation myth. Without knowing any of the detail of its provisions or its history, Magna Carta establishes the principle that Kings (or Prime Ministers) are subject to man-made law and to the judges who uphold it. The fact that the Charter itself may have been a cynical pact produced as a piece of short term expediency between a very small elite group of barons and a weakened king, and was probably entered into by King John under duress, is really neither here nor there. It forms part of our belief in the core values of the UK and the values that the courts will always act to protect. In Lord Bingham’s book, the Rule of Law, he starts his historical analysis with Magna Carta as the foundation stone of the rule of law. That is why Magna Carta can be such a potent weapon in court against the Government.
No judge likes to think that he or she might be offending against Magna Carta, however hazily counsel, or even sometimes the judge, may understand what the terms of the Charter actually were. It stands in the minds of all lawyers as being the core text for the “rule of law”, which can only, in the words of ‘1066 and All That’, be “A Good Thing”."
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