Magna Carta

In class on Monday, we were split up into groups and were sent two different readings.  My reading was about Magna Carta.  Magna Carta is the concept that all people in and not in the government of a nation must abide and follow by the same rules.  Magna Carta was not like a strictly built concept or set of laws, but more of a set of principles known.  The Magna Carta speaks about the power certain people have under certain circumstances.  For example, one of them is that the king has authority in situations of violence and leadership, but isn’t given any excuses to break the rules.  It also states that the Archbishop has the rights to act on anything without interference from the king.  Something that stuck out to me in the Magna Carta summaries was that one of their principles states that there should be a place where courts could always take place and have places to store legal records and information to refer to.  This was suprising to me because It was suggesting that there hadn’t been a court house before.  The idea of doing courts on numerous of different areas just didn’t seem logical to me.   Overall, in the Magna Carta I believed in the ideas of fair hearing and treatment to all people.  When we discussed the Magna Carta, classmates had the same reaction as I did.  Do I think that it is a good functioning set of principles?  Technically I do because it preaches the idea of moral treatment to people and how everyone as a equal right to trials.  One of the problems with it is dated and would need updating.  It is also a little broad from what I read.  I never had really known what Magna Carta was until this activity and it gives off a good sense of what human laws should be.