Magna Carta, Still Posing a Challenge at 800

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/15/world/europe/magna-carta-still-posing-a-challenge-at-800.html

by aaronbrethorst • 11 years ago

60 30 11 years ago

nytimes.com

caf2• 11 years ago

Here is one provision of the Magna Carta (1297 version) listed among the Acts currently in force for one jurisdiction:

http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/act/consol_act/mc129725e...

femto• 11 years ago

Nice juxtaposition. Compare the text of the Australian Capital Territory's (ACT) law in the parent's link:

"No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or disseised of his freehold, liberties or free customs, or be outlawed or exiled or in any other wise destroyed; nor will We pass upon him nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land."

With today's speech by the Australian Human Rights Commissioner, to the ACT's Supreme Court [1].

"Examples of [Federal] government overreach, she said, included powers to indefinitely detain - without rights to judicial review - refugees, asylum seekers, the mentally ill, and those suffering from infectious diseases."

The actions of the Australian Federal and ACT governments are diametrically opposite. The ACT government is the local government that looks after Australia's capital city, where the Australian Federal government sits and makes national laws.

[1] http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/austra...

Ntrails• 11 years ago

Depends on your definition of freeman, of course. I'll lay odds that Aborigines (sp) were not considered to be covered at various points in history

cmdkeen• 11 years ago

That's the problem with Magna Carta, it doesn't actually mean anything. If you change "the law of the land" then you can do all of the things listed above - and note it doesn't even say "lawful judgement and" it is an "or" so you can have detention without trial, even execution without trial as long as it is the law.

oska2• 11 years ago

Can anyone recommend a good book on the Magna Carta and the historical background to it? Keen to do some reading; I know only the basics.

rodgerd• 11 years ago

It's not specific to Magna Carta, but I enjoyed Dan Jones' The Plantagenets, which provides context to how the original document came to be, and how the re-issues were forced by the waxing and waning strength of the kings who followed John. It's an enjoyable book.

oska2• 11 years ago

Thanks for the suggestion. Looked the author up on Wikipedia and found he has also recently written a book on the Magna Carta called Magna Carta: The Making And Legacy Of The Great Charter.

NickSharp• 11 years ago

"1215" by Danny Danziger and John Gillingham is exactly what you want.

http://www.amazon.com/1215-Magna-Carta-Danny-Danziger/dp/074...

icebraining• 11 years ago

I didn't read it, but Magna Carta: A Very Short Introduction has been recommend.

Here's a podcast with the author regarding the topic: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/05/nicholas_vincen.htm...

javert3• 11 years ago

For anyone wondering about why it's being called "Magna Carta" instead of "the Magna Carta"...

From Wikipdia:

Magna Carta was given its name in Latin, a language which has no direct, consistent correlate of the English definite article "the". As a result, the usual academic convention is to refer to the document in English without the article as "Magna Carta" rather than "the Magna Carta".

Of course, in proper English it's "the Magna Carta." The rules of Latin have no bearing on proper English.

Also: We don't call Paris "Par-ee" like in French. Words in different languages are different words. "Magna Carta" just happens to be spelled the same in English and Latin.

Leave it to the NYT to do the wrong but "fashionable" "academic" thing. At least we can count on that.

Language is prescriptive, but I don't want to have that debate.

phaemon2• 11 years ago

Of course, in proper English it's "the Magna Carta."

Nope. You don't say, "the Paris" now do you? There's no particular rule of when you use "the" before a name.

As that notable academic, Tony Hancock, once asked, "Does Magna Carta mean nothing to you? Did she die in vain?"

javert3• 11 years ago

Legal documents are preceeded by "the" unless they are numbered. So: the Constitution, the Patriot Act, the Articles of Confederation, the Freedom of Information Act, the Federal Register. But: HB 289, Title IX, Proposition 8.

This is probably just a species of a more general rule dealing with articles and things that have given names.

smegel• 11 years ago

Nope. You don't say, "the Paris" now do you?

Or New York. Or London.

There's no particular rule of when you use "the" before a name.

Well I don't know if the rules cover all cases, but one rule is you don't use "the" before place names. Or given names "the Barack Obama". Titles are OK "the President of the USA".

Clearly the names of "things" like books require the use of "the". Like "the Bible". It's important to distinguish between the "name" of a book and it's title. We clearly don't say "I read the To Kill a Mockingbird".

spacehome• 11 years ago

There's no particular rule of when you use "the" before a name.

In fact there are rules about when proper nouns require articles. While there are a few exceptions, and the rules are sort of tedious, they do exist, as proved by the fact that you usually (90+% of the time) know whether to use the article on a novel proper noun.

Native speakers don't even know that they know the rules. I only learned through ESL education.

You can get started on the list of rules in a few places, this being one: http://usefulenglish.ru/grammar/part-8-articles-with-miscell...

sambeau• 11 years ago

"Does Magna Carta mean nothing to you?"…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNZosqiJISs

mc322• 11 years ago

Yeah, it's become so pervasive that it's not out of the ordinary for American reporters to say 'Mehiko" instead of Mexico while speaking an otherwise English sentence. Or they try to pronounce the surname Velazquez in Spanish, but when it comes to Van Gogh or 習近平, there is no attempt at native pronunciation. This kind of inconsistency is baffling --moreover their Spanish pronunciation is not Castillian even when the person is Spanish. So they are all over the map.

I've been down to Mexico and I'm quite sure people don't try to pronounce 'Nueva York' as 'New York'.

On the other hand, these same reporters mangle Chinese city names with abandon, so it's not as if they're just trying to say the names in a native fashion --which I guess at least would make some consistent sense.

javert3• 11 years ago

Regarding Chinese city names, in the 2008 Olympics, newscasters were trying to use the Chinese name for the location instead of the English name (which is Beijing). It was horrible. It was incorrect. It was "politically correct."

calibraxis2• 11 years ago

I think it’s a tip-of-the-hat when you use another culture’s pronunciation. When I’m outside the US, sometimes people do that for me.

When I’m speaking a foreign language, I may decide to pronounce an English word with (the so-called) General American accent.

jcranmer• 11 years ago

If you're going for phonetic correctness, Mexico should be pronounced "Meshi-co" according to the original Nahuatl.

Transcription of foreign languages into Latin script is difficult in its own right since the "obvious" phonetic value of letters presumes certain phonosyntactic rules that don't always hold (e.g., Mandarin Chinese uses an aspirated/unaspirated distinction and not a voiced/voiceless distinction). It furthermore doesn't help that the main sources of transcription (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese) don't agree on the phonetic values of letters, nor that people tend to retain the traditional spellings of place names even when proper phonetic readings of that spelling (or even the verbal pronunciation of the name itself) changes.

In my opinion, trying to enforce "native" pronunciation of foreign place names is misguided: those who argue for it don't argue for Österreich, Deutschland, or Hrvatska, so why should we elevate foreign place names that merely happen to be spelled the same in English as their native tongue to getting special treatment?

esfandia• 11 years ago

Of interest to the Canadian readers: one version of Magna Carta is on tour and currently on display at the Canadian Museum of History (i.e., the good old Museum of Civilization) in Ottawa. http://www.magnacartacanada.ca/

calibraxis2• 11 years ago

“In a few months, we will be commemorating the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta—commemorating, but not celebrating; rather, mourning the blows it has suffered.

[...]

“To be sure, the reach of the charter was limited. Nevertheless, as Eric Kasper observes in a scholarly review, “What began as a relatively small check on the arbitrary power of King John eventually led to succeeding generations finding ever more rights in Magna Carta and Article 39. In this sense, Magna Carta is a key point in a long development of the protection of rights against arbitrary executive power.”

— Noam Chomsky http://www.thenation.com/article/198513/killing-commons

GavinBrown• 11 years ago

What's being celebrated today is not Magna Carta itself, but the myth that's grown up around it.

The UK's best blogger on law, "Jack of Kent", puts it well:

http://jackofkent.com/2015/06/the-meaning-of-magna-carta/

billpg• 11 years ago

He's the guy sitting in the corner on New Year's Eve muttering that its just an arbitrary point on the calendar with no natural significance.

pjc50• 11 years ago

He's also the one pointing out that the UK government is keen to celebrate Magna Carta (which has no constitutional status or enforceability) while dismantling the Human Rights act (which is definitely enforceable).

Magna Carta, Still Posing a Challenge at 800

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