Magna Carta's Enduring Legacy: January 19, 2016 - January 31, 2016 at The King Kamehameha V Judiciary History Center

             

The King Kamehameha V Judiciary History Center 

417 S. King Street, Honolulu, HI 96813

Magna Carta's Enduring Legacy

January 19, 2016 - January 31, 2016

A traveling exhibition created by the American Bar Association Standing Committee on the Law Library of Congress and the Law Library of Congress.

Free and open to the public Monday - Friday, 8:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. 

The exhibit also will be open to the public on two Saturdays, January 23 and 30 

8:30 a.m. - Noon. 

For more information, please call 539-4999.

Magna Carta is the charter of liberties that England’s King John granted to his barons in 1215. In the centuries since its creation, Magna Carta has become one of the most enduring symbols of liberty and the rule of law. It is often cited as one of the founding documents of modern democracy and constitutional government and is seen as a forerunner of such important sources of the British Constitution as the Petition of Right (1628), Habeas Corpus Act (1679), and English Bill of Rights (1689). In the United States, the document was a major influence in the creation of the Declaration of Independence, United States Constitution, and Bill of Rights. Although in many ways Magna Carta belongs to the medieval society that created it, some of the most important people in our constitutional history have found in it an ancient precedent for the marriage of individual rights and constitutional government that has characterized the rise of the modern world. Magna Carta’s admirers have seen in it the origin of many enduring constitutional principles:  the rule of law, the right to a jury trial, the right to a speedy trial, freedom from unlawful imprisonment, protections from unlawful seizure of property, the theory of representative government, the principle of “no taxation without representation,” and most importantly, the concept of fundamental law—a law that not even the sovereign can alter. 

The exhibition, in the rotunda of Aliiolani Hale, shares images of objects from Library of Congress collections that illustrate Magna Carta’s influence throughout the centuries and explain the document’s long history.