California Legislature—2015–16 Regular Session

Assembly Concurrent Resolution No. 76

Introduced by Assembly Member Jones

(Coauthors: Assembly Members Chávez and Lackey)

(Coauthors: Senators Bates, Hall, Leno, Moorlach, and Pan)

May 19, 2015

Assembly Concurrent Resolution No. 76—Relative to the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta.

LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL’S DIGEST

ACR 76, as introduced, Jones. Magna Carta: 800th anniversary.

This measure would commemorate the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta.

Fiscal committee: no.

WHEREAS, In response to the accumulation of grievances,
heavy taxation, and unsuccessful wars, a group of rebellious barons
forced King John of England to agree to limitations on royal power
and submit to the rule of law by affixing his seal to a charter of
liberties known to posterity as Magna Carta, Latin for the Great
Charter, on June 15, 1215, at a meadow beside the river Thames
called Runnymede, near Windsor; and

WHEREAS, While many of Magna Carta’s 63 clauses relate to
specific grievances and long-defunct feudal practices of little
contemporary relevance, several of its provisions have had a lasting
significance as precedents guaranteeing fundamental rights and
liberties; and

WHEREAS, Clause 39 of Magna Carta provides, “No freeman
shall be taken, or imprisoned, or disseised, or outlawed, or exiled,
or in any way harmed - nor will we go upon or send upon him -
save by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of land”;
and

WHEREAS, Clause 40 of the Magna Carta provides, “To none
will we sell, to none deny or delay, right or justice”; and

WHEREAS, Magna Carta embodies the principle that no person,
and no government, is above the law; and

WHEREAS, The phrase “due process of law” first appeared as
a substitute for Magna Carta’s phrase “law of the land” in a 1354
statute of King Edward III that restated Magna Carta’s guarantee
of liberty of the subject and, therefore, Magna Carta created a
precedent in guaranteeing “due process of law” that was later
embodied in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United
States Constitution, the sources of key constitutional liberties for
Americans; and

WHEREAS, Other clauses of Magna Carta state important
principles, such as the right to impartial and competent judges,
reasonable taxes, courts held in fixed places, fixed weights and
measures, criminal penalties that are proportionate to the
seriousness of the crime, and limitations on taking private property
for public use; and

WHEREAS, King John later repudiated Magna Carta, and a
civil war followed, but it was reissued, with revisions, numerous
times by subsequent monarchs, and though many provisions fell
into disuse or were superseded by subsequent legislation, Magna
Carta remains as an inspirational precedent for the proposition that
government power is not absolute and that the people possess
fundamental rights which government cannot violate; and

WHEREAS, Magna Carta is an early milestone along the path
toward freedom and constitutional government, followed by the
development of Parliament in the 1260s, the 1606 First Charter of
Virginia, the 1620 Mayflower Compact and other colonial charters,
the 1628 Petition of Right, the 1679 Habeas Corpus Act, and 1689
English Bill of Rights, the 1776 American Declaration of
Independence, the 1787 United States Constitution, the 1789 United
States Bill of Rights, and the 1948 United Nations’ Universal
Declaration of Human Rights; and

WHEREAS, In a “History of the English-Speaking Peoples”,
Winston Churchill summarized Magna Carta’s achievement,
stating, “In place of the King’s arbitrary despotism, they proposed,
not the withering anarchy of feudal separatism, but a system of
checks and balances which would accord the monarchy its
necessary strength, but would prevent its perversion by a tyrant or
a fool. The leaders of the barons in 1215 groped in the dim light
towards a fundamental principle. Government must henceforth
mean something more than the arbitrary rule of any man, and
custom and the law must stand even above the king. It was this
idea, perhaps only half understood, that gave unity and force to
the barons’ opposition and made the Charter which they now
demanded imperishable”; and

WHEREAS, In his third inaugural address, delivered on January
20, 1941, as continental Europe groaned under the yoke of Nazi
tyranny, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “Democracy is not
dying. ... The democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase in
human history. It is human history. It permeated the ancient life
of early peoples. It blazed anew in the middle ages. It was written
in Magna [Carta]. ... Its vitality was written into our own
Mayflower Compact, into the Declaration of Independence, into
the Constitution of the United States, into the Gettysburg Address”;
and

WHEREAS, In too many parts of the world, the right to jury
trial, habeas corpus, the rule of law, fair legal procedures,
reasonable taxation, and the proposition that no government is
above the law, principles either enshrined in or foreshadowed by
Magna Carta, remain goals yet to be attained, rather than a legacy
to be celebrated; and

WHEREAS, For as long as people celebrate freedom under law,
Magna Carta will remain an inspiring example of a people’s ability
to resist tyranny and arbitrary government and will remain “the
Great Charter” of liberties; now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the Assembly of the State of California, the Senate
thereof concurring, That the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta
hereby be commemorated and the residents of the State of
California be encouraged to observe this important milestone in
the history of freedom and development of modern constitutional
government; and be it further

Resolved by the Assembly of the State of California, the Senate
thereof concurring, That the Chief Clerk of the Assembly transmit
copies of this resolution to the author for appropriate distribution.