By Michael Hill
Correspondent
“It’s overwhelmingly flattering and humbling to have this chance,” said Robert Pallitto.
Seton Hall Political Science Professor Pallitto who considers it a scholar’s realized dream to speak at the National Archives.
The subject: his just-published book, In the Shadow of the Great Charter. It marks the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta’s signing and sealing on June 15, 1215.
Rebellious, wealthy barons wrote the Magna Carta to protect their rights and property from a tyrannical King John of England who signed it to avert civil war.
America’s Constitution owes its Fifth Amendment and the concept of due process to the Magna Carta.
“In those days the king, nowadays, the modern state, cannot go against a person, cannot take away their liberty or property without following the law of the land. So, the basic message is that government is subject to law. And to me that has everything to do with our liberties and it is really the most important thing the document gives us today,” Pallitto said.
Pallitto says the Magna Carta establishes protections against the government during the war on terror. In 2008 when the Bush administration denied enemy combatants access to federal court, Supreme Court Justice Kennedy relied on the Magna Carta’s habeas corpus or judicial review principles for his majority opinion.
“So Justice Kennedy said it’s simply too important. Historically we know that this is the most important right that individuals have against the state and we can’t deny it to you,” Pallitto said.
But, some have argued the great charter closed its mouth, its eyes and its ears on affording protections to women, Native Americans and enslaved Africans.
“Because at the time it was an agreement between one wealthy person and another group of wealthy people and had nothing to do with the common people,” said Pallitto. “We can say the same thing about the constitution, right, preamble to the constitution talks about how we can enjoy the blessings of liberty and so forth. And then the constitution goes on to deny those very blessings to large groups of people within our country. Over time that has changed, so we don’t look at the document as something that’s fixed forever in terms of what it meant. We look at it as something that evolves over time through struggles, inside the courts and outside the courts.”
Pallitto and other legal scholars say despite its shortcomings, the Magna Carta has endured for centuries because of its hallmark principles of guaranteeing access to court to be heard and requiring government itself to obey the law of the land in a quest for justice.