The Principle
Magna Carta (1215) is the foundational document of Anglo-American constitutional law. Its most famous provision - Clause 39 - declares that no free man shall be seized, imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, or exiled "except by the lawful judgment of his peers and by the law of the land." This guarantee of due process and the supremacy of law over the king's arbitrary will has been the constitutional bedrock of the English-speaking legal tradition for eight centuries. What is less often noted is that Magna Carta was drafted under the primary influence of Archbishop Stephen Langton - one of the most distinguished biblical scholars of his era - and that its opening clause protects the freedom of the English Church and reflects a legal theology rooted in Scripture.
Biblical Foundation
Deuteronomy 17:18-20 commands that the king shall write himself a copy of the law, read it all the days of his life, and not turn aside from the commandment "to the right hand, or to the left." The king is explicitly placed under the law of God - he is not above it, not its source, but its subject. Proverbs 8:15-16 declares that kings reign and princes decree justice by divine Wisdom - suggesting that legitimate royal authority is derived from and accountable to a higher source. These texts provided the theological warrant for the baronial claim at Runnymede: even the king is bound by law. Stephen Langton, who had spent years in Paris studying and teaching Scripture, would have understood these texts' political implications and brought them to the negotiations. Magna Carta's opening clause - "the English Church shall be free" - echoes Galatians 5:1 ("Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free") and reflects the ongoing canonical principle that the Church's freedom from royal control was a biblical imperative, not merely a political arrangement.
Historical Transmission
Magna Carta was reissued several times in the 13th century, each reissue consolidating and expanding its provisions. Stephen Langton had come to England specifically as papal legate after years as a theologian at Paris, where he had developed a biblical case for limiting royal power and protecting Church freedom. His scholarly formation included deep engagement with the Deuteronomic kingship laws and the prophetic tradition of speaking truth to power. The charter's provisions on due process, access to justice, and protection against arbitrary royal action were developed from the canonical tradition Langton knew - a tradition rooted in Scripture's vision of the king as subject to divine law. The subsequent interpretation of Magna Carta by Sir Edward Coke in the 17th century, which made it the constitutional anchor of parliamentary resistance to Stuart absolutism, transmitted the charter's principles to America through the colonial charters and the eventual Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Modern Application
The US Constitution's Fifth Amendment - "No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law" - quotes Magna Carta's Clause 39 almost verbatim, making Magna Carta the direct ancestor of the most litigated provision of American constitutional law. The Fourteenth Amendment extended the same due process guarantee against state governments. Every constitutional democracy in the English common law tradition - the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India - has its constitutional framework shaped by the Magna Carta tradition that Stephen Langton's biblical scholarship helped produce. The principle that rulers are subject to law, not above it, is the constitutional translation of the Deuteronomic vision of the law-bound king.
Scholarly Debate
J.C. Holt's Magna Carta remains the definitive historical study, tracing its origins in the baronial revolt and Langton's facilitation. Holt emphasises the political and feudal context over theological motivation, a view that has dominated mainstream historiography. Nicholas Vincent's research into Langton's role has rehabilitated the archbishop's theological influence on the document's drafting, arguing that his biblical scholarship shaped the document's conceptual framework more than Holt acknowledged. Harold Berman's Law and Revolution situates Magna Carta within the broader development of Western law from canon law foundations, arguing that the document's principles are inseparable from the canonical-biblical tradition that Langton embodied. The question of how much credit to assign biblical theology versus baronial self-interest in the origins of Magna Carta has never been fully resolved, but the document's opening clause - guaranteeing Church freedom - is difficult to explain without the theological conviction its primary drafter brought to Runnymede.