The Reinvention of Magna Carta 1216–1616

17th Oct 2024 by UName-456522

A REFRESHING NEW LOOK AT THE SUSTAINABILITY OF OUR BRILLIANT MAGNA CARTA An appreciation by Elizabeth Robson Taylor of Richmond Green Chambers and Phillip Taylor MBE, Head of Chambers, Reviews Editor, “The Barrister”, and Mediator This exceptional paperback caught our eye when we looked at the dates it covers: 1216 to 1616. And, at a time when we have only just celebrated 800 years of its sealing, so what happened in the first 400 years? The answer lies in this brilliantly written work from Professor Sir John Baker based on his lectures. This book is published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) under the series “Cambridge Studies in English Legal History”. As the publisher states, “Magna Carta was largely ineffective for practical purposes between the fourteenth century and the sixteenth century”. The reason being that late-medieval law lectures gave “no hint of its later importance” hence a need for reinvention possibly! And there, of course, lies the problem: the “taking for granted” of this charter which does not figure that high on the British agenda whilst it’s revered in the United States of America and other prominent jurisdictions! Perhaps one of the problems rests with the fact that it is “primarily a legal story and the sources are not written in English” as Baker suggests. Using a reality test, this formidable and learned work is not for the timid or the uninitiated in matters of the sealing of “Magna Carta” however uninterested the British public really are. Baker gives a flavour of the content, writing, for instance, that “a treatise by William Fleetwood (c.1558) was still in the traditional mould, but the lectures of the 'Puritan' barrister and MP Robert Snagge in 1581, and the speeches and tracts of his colleagues, advocated new uses for it”. And then there are the long years, described as “centuries of oblivion”, until in 1587 there were eight reported cases in which chapter 29 was cited. The celebrated leading jurist of the time, Sir Edward Coke, made extensive claims for chapter 29, linking it with habeas corpus, and then as a judge (1606-16) he deployed it with effect in challenging “encroachments on the common law and the liberty of the subject”. This book ends in 1616 with the lectures of Francis Ashley, summarising the effects of the new learning, and then Coke's dismissal for pushing his case too hard. A challenging new account. Thank you, Sir John. The paperback book was published on 11th January 2017.

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