The first scholarly edition of Magna Carta was published by the eminent jurist William Blackstone. It was not an easy task. There was no good text available.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The Magna Carta is widely known to be one of the foundational documents for our Constitution. I can only imagine that a mention of that in a court decision would be forbidden by our friends on the right.
Magna Carta has 63 clauses in abbreviated Latin. Two of them that are still on the statute book, numbers 39 and 40, could be said to have changed the way in which the free world has grown.
Magna Carta has become totemic. It is in the comedy of Tony Hancock, in the poetry of Kipling, never far from the front pages in a constitutional crisis.
I will begin first to search out this right by that magna charta, that great and faithful charter which was made to Abraham, the father of the faithful, in the name of all his seed.
I do think that Magna Carta and international law are worth paying some attention to.
I want this book to be facts, to be important, to be history.
Magna Charta is such a fellow, that he will have no sovereign.
Is it rather stupid and dangerous to take Magna Carta so much for granted, as many of us seem to do, and to think of this attitude as 'very English?'
Many people know that Shakespeare's dramatic 'canon' was established in 1623 by the publication of the so-called First Folio. That hefty volume contained thirty-six plays.
The Bible has been the Magna Carta of the poor and of the oppressed.