And taxes were to be levied only through the consent of the elected officials. The Magna Carta was different from the Constitution in that the Magna Carta was mainly concerned "…with largely feudal issues that benefited the aristocracy," whereas the Constitution was based on creating fair representation by the people (Arnheim, et al., 2009). TWO: The fairness of the laws is similar in that when the phrase "rule of law"

Magna Carta does not look like a constitution. In point of fact, it looks like a list of demands issued by hostage-takers, which in some sense it was: some kings are born constitutional monarchs, and some kings achieve it, but King John had constitutional monarchy thrust upon him. We must realize that the Magna Carta as a document was not itself written by the head of state -- who was,

The barons had hoped to protect their own families and lands, but the document actually came to protect all the English, and was used as a model for the United States Constitution nearly six hundred years later. It is also the foundation document for the British Constitution. The document also introduced the concept of "majority rule," which would not actually be enforced until much later. The document, written during feudal

The U.S. Constitution also included many of those Magna Carta rights from the first state constitutions. Equally important in developing the rights delineated in the Bill of Rights was another 17th century English document, the 1689 English Bill of Rights, which limited power of the monarch, mandated free elections, gave the citizens the right to petition laws they deemed unjust, and created the concept of a system of checks and

England faced huge debts and the expense of maintaining a militia in America, after the costly Seven Years' War. The English parliament believed that the colonies should finance a significant portion of their own defense and thus in 1765 levied the first direct tax, the Stamp Act. Nearly every document, such as newspapers, legal writs, licenses, insurance policies, and even playing cards had to include a stamp proving payment

The concept of universal human rights may have been seeded by the Magna Carta, but did not reach fruition until the United States Constitution had been drafted in the late eighteenth century. Built on the Enlightenment values of individualism and inalienable universal rights, the Constitution helped lay the groundwork for the French Declaration of the Rights of the Man and of the Citizen in 1789. In fact, these two documents