The Magna Carta is a 1215 charter of rights signed by King John of England to make peace with his barons who had begun rebelling against his rule. When it was created, England had gone through sixteen miserable years under the bad leadership of King John; characterized by legal chicanery, violence, blackmail, and extortion. The document was the first ever to contain laws imposed against a king to control his power and protect the civil rights of the citizens. Before that, even the most learned of those times believed that it was not for the ruled subjects to question the actions of the king. The people thought that a ruler needed to be a person with unquestionable authority. They also believed that war and violence were inevitable and that it was a grave affair of the state (Sun Tzu, 2002). The belief was that kingship worked under energetic and talented military leaders such as Henry II, King John’s father. Magna Carta however marked a major turning point in leadership style. The charter became part of the statute law of England in 1297 and has since then undergone many changes. The Magna Carta is still considered a vital symbol of liberty up to today. It has been described as the foundation of freedom of individual citizens and one of the greatest constitutional documents ever written.
Most of the clauses of the Magna Carta addressed the administration of justice, rights, and freedoms. King John had been trying to gain power over his subjects by imposing heavy taxes on almost every activity the people undertook including marriage. The Magna Carta was written to declare that everyone is subject of the law including the king himself. The constitutional document forbade the king from taking away individuals' rights. The charter put it forward that a good king is the one who rules by example; by being the first to obey the rules he uses to govern his people. Clause 38, for instance, prevented any official from placing a man on trial upon his unsupported statement or without witnesses of the truth (Magna Carta, 1963. The Magna Cart, therefore, recognizes justice and truth as an ideal for kingship.
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The Magna Carta also recognized the fact that a good leader must involve the subjects in decision making. Clause 55 of the charter provoked the involvement of a majority vote of the 25 barons in matters of fines and taxes imposed on the people (Magna Carta, 1963). To become a good leader, the charter required King John to stop taking individual decisions concerning the taxes and fines imposed on his subjects since those decisions were mostly for his selfish gains. He imposed the taxes, not for the best interest of people but to deprive the barons off any power of ever challenging his rule by crippling them financially. Ideally, people respect a good leader out of their own will. The Magna Carta, therefore, made sure that the people were not blackmailed into fearing their king who previously had the power to do anything he pleased without being questioned by the law.
Magna Carta also recognized that for an ideal kingship, it is inevitable for the subjects to be allowed to challenge it when they felt the need to do so. Clause 61 of the charter permitted a committee of the twenty-five barons to meet and overrule the king whenever they felt that his decisions were not for the best interest of the people. Although the first Magna Carta did not succeed in regulating the King's power, since King John did not have any intentions of following it, the document was the future of Democracy, which has been established to be the best type of rule humanity will ever achieve. Magna Carta, therefore, advocated for a democratic kind of rule as the ideal kingship. In this kind of kingship, the ruler was expected to govern according to the will of the people.
Just like it was established in Medina in 622 CE to promote peace among Muslims and non-Muslims, (The Constitution of Medina, 1978), the Magna Carta charter also recognized that a good kingship needed to allow people the freedom of their religious beliefs. This would later become a major element of democracy. In a democratic country, people have the right to hold on to their religious beliefs, and no one is allowed by the law to forcefully impose their beliefs on others since people develop religious beliefs from different experiences and thus no one can be forced to believe what they have not experienced and cannot be scientifically proven. Religious beliefs belong to an individual's personal space that the government should not interfere.
The Magna Carta established the basics of a peaceful coexistence of human beings that is witnessed in today's world. Indeed, peaceful negotiations are a better way of solving disagreements rather than going to war. The leaders who ruled before Magna Carta and the years after the failure of the first draft of the constitutional document used violence and force to ensure their subjects obeyed the rule of law. Soon afterward, people came to understand the value of ruling by winning the people’s trust and will as advocated by the Magna Carta. Limiting the king's power and protecting the rights of each citizen from being abused by anyone even those in authority came to be the ideal style of leadership.
References
Magna Carta. (1963). London: British Museum.
Sun Tzu. (2002). The Art of War translated by John Minford. London: Penguin books.
The Constitution of Medina. (1978). Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, BSOAS, Vol 51 p. 1-42
