Our entire foundation of Law is based on foreign law.
Magna Carta, also called Magna Carta Libertatum (the Great Charter of Liberty), is an English legal charter, originally issued in the year 1215. It was written in Latin and is known by its Latin name. The usual English translation of Magna Carta is Great Charter.
Magna Carta required King John of England to proclaim certain rights (pertaining to freemen), respect certain legal procedures, and accept that his will could be bound by the law. It explicitly protected certain rights of the King's subjects, whether free or fettered — and implicitly supported what became the writ of habeas corpus, allowing appeal against unlawful imprisonment.
Magna Carta was arguably [according to whom?]the most significant [citation needed] early influence on the extensive historical process that led to the rule of constitutional law today in the English speaking world. However, it was "far from unique, either in content or form" [1]. Magna Carta influenced the development of the common law [citation needed] and many constitutional documents, including the United States Constitution.[2] Many clauses were renewed throughout the Middle Ages, and continued to be renewed as late as the 18th century. By the second half of the 19th century, however, most clauses in their original form had been repealed from English law.
Magna Carta was the first document forced onto an English King by a group of his subjects (the barons) in an attempt to limit his powers by law and protect their privileges. It was preceded by the 1100 Charter of Liberties in which King Henry I voluntarily stated that his own powers were under the law.
In practice, Magna Carta in the medieval period mostly did not limit the power of Kings; but by the time of the English Civil War it had become an important symbol for those who wished to show that the King was bound by the law.
Magna Carta is normally understood to refer to a single document, that of 1215. Various amended versions of Magna Carta appeared in subsequent years however, and it is the 1297 version which remains on the statute books of England and Wales.
Magna Carta's "fame is primarily due, however, not to its intrinsic merits but the use parliamentarians made of it in their struggle with the Stuarts in the Seventeenth Century and the export of this myth to New England by the early settlers"[3].
