Lex Terrae 800 Years on

Abstract

The Magna Carta is one of the "charters of liberty granted by power," that according to James Madison was superseded by American Revolution and its novus ordo seclorum. While we should give measured praise to the Magna Carta as the great-great-grandfather of the American Constitution, we should not lose sight of its shortcomings and the ways the generation of 1776 improved on its precedent. Magna Carta was an important step toward a jurisprudence of freedom — one improved by the American Revolution, and which today’s legal profession has, alas, largely abandoned.

Keywords: Magna Carta, positivism, natural law, natural rights