Only four of the 63 clauses in Magna Carta are still valid today – 1 (part), 13, 39 and 40.

39. “No freemen shall be taken or imprisoned…or exiled or in any way destroyed… except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.” This word means that no one is above the law.

Magna Carta, which means ‘The Great Charter’, is one of the most important documents in history as it established the principle that everyone is subject to the law, even the king, and guarantees the rights of individuals, the right to justice and the right to a fair trial.

One right that people have identified in the Carta is that of religious freedom. Magna Carta contains two provisions guaranteeing freedom of the church from government authority. In 2013, the United States Supreme Court relied on that authority in a ruling that affirmed the principle of religious autonomy.

Habeas Corpus is an Act of Parliament, still in force today, which ensures that no one can be imprisoned unlawfully. In 1215 Magna Carta stated that no one could be imprisoned unlawfully, and the first recorded use of this provision was in 1305, but Habeas Corpus as we know it today was not made law until 1679.

The Magna Carta (1215) Among them was the right of the church to be free from governmental interference, the rights of all free citizens to own and inherit property and to be protected from excessive taxes.

The Magna Carta represents the beginning of such change. It was a document issued in 1215 to King John. It ordained that no freeman could be punished except through the law of the land. The document was presented by the some of the King’s closest subjects.

1 : one enjoying civil or political liberty. 2 : one having the full rights of a citizen. Freeman.

To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice”. This clause limits the power of rulers, and introduces the idea of lawful process and the idea of a jury. The BBC summarised the main points of the document as: No one is above the law, not even the king. Everyone has a right to a fair trial.

It is perhaps important to remember that in 13th-century CE England ‘freemen’ constituted less than 25% of the population and, in any case, the barons were not concerned with them but rather with their own position.

Magna Carta was very important for the whole development of parliament. First of all it asserted a fundamental principle that taxation needed the consent of the kingdom. Secondly, it made taxation absolutely necessary for the king because it stopped up so many sources of revenue.