Eight centuries after Magna Carta was first sealed, the gut reaction, fuelled by hundreds of years of lionization, is to look back on a glorious history of rights, wherein the trajectory is straight from a solid foundation to today’s human rights.
This impulse is wrong – at least in the sense that it’s coupled with the conclusion either that rights are beautifully enshrined now, or in a state of depressing disrepair. Rather, Magna Carta fits in nicely with the ups and downs of seriousness about rights, a trend particularly relevant today.
Most of Magna Carta’s original provisions have been consigned as relics …read more
Source: Ottawa Citizen
