About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

15 Insights on L. & Soc'y 30 (2014-2015)
Magna Carta in Supreme Court Jurisprudence

handle is hein.journals/insilaso15 and id is 30 raw text is: V REVIEW Magna Carta in Supreme Court Jurisprudence by Stephen J. Wermiel Editor's Note: This article is adapted from Magna Carta in Supreme Court Jurisprudence, which appears as Chapter 5 in Magna Carta and the Rule of Law, Daniel Magraw et al., eds., published by the American Bar Association in 2014. here is no doubt that Magna Car- ta has influenced conceptions of rights and power in the United States and elsewhere and has shaped the evolution of the common law. But what influence has Magna Carta had on the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court? The U.S. Reports of the Supreme Court's decisions refer to Magna Carta in more than 170 cases. There is a com- mon theme that spans two centuries: the role of Magna Carta is largely sym- bolic. For the Court, Magna Carta is venerable historical evidence invoked to establish the pedigree of a claim that a particular right exists or to determine what that right means. As justices have made clear in speeches and decisions, however, Magna Carta is not and cannot be positive law in the Supreme Court, since it far predates the writing of the U.S. Constitution, which created the Supreme Court. The first reference to Magna Carta in the U.S. Reports appears to be in the summary of oral arguments by the very first Supreme Court reporter of deci- sions, Alexander J. Dallas. In the official report of State of Georgia v. Brailsford, Dallas wrote in 1794 that lawyers for the defendant, Brailsford, a British citizen who lived in Great Britain, referred to Magna Carta in their argument in a string of authorities. The first reference to Magna Car- ta in a justice's opinion appears to be by Justice Joseph Story in a dissent- ing opinion from the majority ruling of Chief Justice John Marshall in 1814 in the case of Brown v. United States. The case from a Massachusetts court was a lawsuit over the ownership of timber. Armitz Brown, a U.S. citizen, claimed the timber was rightfully his, but the federal government, in the midst of war against England, claimed to own it as forfeited enemy property. Chief Justice Marshall ruled that Congress had not authorized the seizure of enemy prop- erty so the property belonged to Brown. Justice Story had written the opinion for the circuit court of Massachusetts and cited Magna Carta several times there. In his Supreme Court dissent, he repeated his own words from the circuit court, reiterating his references to Mag- na Carta. At the other end of the span of cen- turies, the Supreme Court most recent- ly resorted twice in 2012 to Magna Carta. In Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church v. Equal Employ- ment Opportunity Commission, Chief Justice John Roberts concluded that the church autonomy guaranteed by the religion clauses of the First Amend- ment precludes a minister from suing her church for employment discrimina- tion. Setting the historical context for the issues raised by the case, Roberts wrote in January 2012: Controversy between church and state over religious offices is hardly new. In 1215, the issue was addressed in the very first clause of Magna Carta. There King John agreed that the English church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished and its liber- ties unimpaired. The King in par- ticular accepted the freedom of elections, a right thought to be of the greatest necessity and impor- tance to the English church. In Southern Union Co. v. United States, Justice Stephen Breyer referred to Magna Carta in a June 2012 dissent- ing opinion that was joined by Justices Anthony Kennedy and Samuel Alito. The court's majority, in an opinion by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, ruled that the Sixth Amendment requires that juries, not judges, determine any rele- vant facts that increase the amount of a criminal fine. Justice Breyer argued that enhanced criminal fines, unlike sen- tences of imprisonment, could be based on factual determinations by judges. Breyer noted that any limitations on the power of judges in imposing fines were historically included in Magna Carta. As a final preliminary matter before examining the ways Magna Carta has been used, it is instructive to examine the frequency of references in different periods and by different justices. An informal examination of references to Magna Carta produced the following statistics: 30 Insights on Law & Society 15.1 o Fall 2014 o © 2014 American Bar Association

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most