Happy Magna Carta Day!

June 15 2015 marks the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta.

This document, sealed at Runnymede, codified and established legal practices and principles that helped individuals to flourish, not just in England but also worldwide.

Magna Carta helped bring freedom under law for all that lived under it, established the processes for free and fair trials and is even said to have, through standardising weights and measures, brought into vogue the pint glass.

However, it wasn’t just what the Great Charter established but also what it set in train that was impressive. Acts such as that of Habeas Corpus were derived from the principles that were initially came from Magna Carta and, in doing so, helped the freedoms of the individual to evolve.

Nonetheless, this evolution can also be seen as Magna Carta’s undoing. Whilst other countries like the United States of America sought to establish Magna Carta in its Constitution, successive UK Government’s have repealed clause after clause meaning that only three clauses out of the initial 63 still remain on the Statue Books in England. Indeed, this process has also been effected by the UK’s membership of the European Union, which has even undermined some of the core guarantee of a free and fair trial by jury.

Magna Carta’s relevance has slipped away compared to other countries and there is a need to debate its relevance today and whether or not our core freedoms need to re-established and how.

To do so, The Freedom Association is organising a special event at Christ Church, Oxford on Wednesday 17th June 2015. This event will see the launch of a new book, Magna Carta Today, that looks to reopen the debate by setting out what a new Great Charter might look like today. Its author, Ewen Stewart, is an economist that looks at the text of the Great Charter in a new way that tries to identify where it was influential and, where relevant, how its principles can be re-established.

To reserve you place and receive a free copy of Ewen’s book, please go to our Eventbrite page and we look forward to seeing you in Oxford.

Any further questions please contact The Director of The Freedom Association, Rory Broomfield on [email protected]