Yesterday at lunch we invited you all to join us for candy, pop, popcorn and a special viewing of “From Hengist to Harper”, a 30 minute abridged version of John Robson’s full length documentary titled “Magna Carta: Our Shared Legacy of Liberty.” In addition John Robson put on a special presentation specifically on the legal aspects of the story of the Magna Carta. We are so glad so many of you could make it to the event, we hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did.
“From Hengist to Harper” taught us that the Magna Carta was actually the product of what would have been considered at the time to be a conservative movement rather than a progressive one. Traditional liberties like the ones protected in the Magna Carta had been respected until the terrible rule of King John and the barons who wrote the Magna Carta longed for these earlier times. The Magna Carta may be held out as an elite agreement and the documentary noted its failure to protect groups of people, notably black slaves and members of the Jewish faith. However, the Magna Carta evolved into the Charter for the common people and was read aloud to the public so that they might understand their rights and freedoms. The rights we enjoy today depend upon the rights contained in the Magna Carta and the protection of those rights by brave individuals over the past 800 years.
John Robson’s presentation focused specifically on the legal aspects of the Magna Carta’s legacy. He asserted that if we are to have a living tree approach to constitutional law we ought to remember that “trees have roots and great trees have deep roots.” The Magna Carta makes up the roots of Canadian constitutional law and the traditional liberties it intended to protect are not free from threat in John Robson’s view. Problems like the strong executive presence in modern legislatures and the high expense of access to justice could erode the protections that were fought for by the barons who forced King John to sign the Magna Carta and the many others after them who continued to demand that the government respect their freedom. “Free men will have their rights even if they must fight for them” and John Robson hopes that we never forget the constitutional legacy of the Magna Carta and never stop fighting to protect the freedoms it guarantees in the modern legal context.
