Student Question
Compare the US Bill of Rights and the Magna Carta.
Quick answer:
The Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights are both attempts to safeguard individual freedoms. They both guarantee religious freedom, albeit in different forms, and both guarantee the accused the right to a jury trial and to a speedy trial.
The Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights both address gaps in existing laws in the time they were written and establish protections for individuals against the state.
The two most striking similarities are, first, the Magna Carta's declaration of limited religious freedom:
the English Church is to be free and to have all its rights fully and its liberties entirely
This empowers the church as its own entity: the church is explicitly guaranteed not to be simply an arm of the state or under the power of the monarch or the aristocracy. Likewise, the Bill of Rights establishes religious freedom in the First Amendment, stating:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof
The interpretation of both these religious freedoms has varied at different times and has expanded in the twentieth century. The Bill of Rights focuses on the individual's religious...
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freedom, while the Magna Carta focuses on the institutional church's freedom from the government.
Second, the Magna Carta states:
No freeman is to be taken or imprisoned ... or outlawed or exiled or in any way ruined, nor will we go against such a man or send against him save by lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land. To no-one will we sell or deny of delay right or justice.
The Bill of Rights says:
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed
Both documents assert the right of the accused to be tried by a jury of one's peers and to a speedy trial. These are important safeguards to less powerful individuals, stating that the rule of law will prevail over the whim of a powerful person, such as a king.
The Magna Carta had a symbolic more than a literal value for many years. It came to the forefront in the seventeenth century as England headed to civil war over what many thought was the overreach and tyranny of the Stuart kings. Both documents stand as important safeguards against tyranny.