Center for Teaching the Rule of Law

August 24, 1215 – Magna Carta is ruled to be invalid  . . .  Wait . . . What?

8/24/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
Magna Carta (not "The" Magna Carta, as the translation of Magna Carta form the Latin includes the definitive article "The Great Charter") is universally recognized as the foundation of English, and by extension, American, constitution government.  Except, of course, that it isn't. 

Although many of the ideas expressed in Magna Carta are similar or identical to modern concepts of liberal democracy - trial by jury, no taxation without consent of the governed, the government is subject to the law, etc. - the fact is that Magna Carta was imposed on King John by the English barons at Runnymede  under duress.  As soon as the barons had returned to their estates and, more importantly, most, but not all, had disbanded their retinues of knights and men-at-arms, John set about undoing what had been done.


​His first act was to send an emissary to the Vatican, seeking to have Pope Clement III declare Magna Carta to be contrary to God's will. John had good reason to hope that the Pope would respond positively to this entreaty.

Magna Carta had not appeared full born on June 15, 2025, but was the process of a years long  process of negotiation during which John sought to delay having to make any concessions to the barons while gather international support.  During these negotiations, it was John's hope that the Pope would give him valuable legal and moral support, and accordingly John played for time; the King had declared himself to be a papal vassal in 1213 and correctly believed he could count on the Pope for help. John also began recruiting mercenary forces from France, although some were later sent back to avoid giving the impression that the King was escalating the conflict. In a further move to shore up his support, John took an oath to become a crusader, a move which gave him additional political protection under church law, even though many felt the promise was insincere.

Letters backing John arrived from the Pope in April 2015, but by then the rebel barons had organized into a military faction. They congregated at Northampton in May and renounced their feudal ties to John, marching on London, Lincoln, and Exeter. John's efforts to appear moderate and conciliatory had been largely successful, but once the rebels held London, they attracted a fresh wave of defectors from the royalists. The King offered to submit the problem to a committee of arbitration with the Pope as the supreme arbiter, but this was not attractive to the rebels. Stephen Langton, the archbishop of Canterbury, had been working with the rebel barons on their demands, and after the suggestion of papal arbitration failed, John instructed Langton to organize peace talks.  The result was the great gathering at Runnymede and the sealing (not signing, as is often incorrectly stated) of Magna Carta.

Having failed at obtaining Papal arbitration, John simply requested that the Pope declare the charter to be null and void.  Clement, who viewed any surrender of power by a temporal ruler to be a challenge to the Church's own power, obliged.  In fact, Clement had dispatched commissioners even before John's request was received who arrived in England and promptly excommunicated the barons who had refused to disband their forces.  Once aware of the charter, the Pope responded in detail: in a letter dated 24 August and arriving in late September, he declared the charter to be "not only shameful and demeaning but also illegal and unjust" since John had been "forced to accept" it, and accordingly the charter was "null, and void of all validity for ever"; under threat of excommunication, the King was not to observe the charter, nor the barons try to enforce it.

By then, however,  violence had broken out between the two sides; less than three months after it had been agreed, John and the loyalist barons firmly repudiated the failed charter: the First Barons' War erupted. The rebel barons concluded that peace with John was impossible, and turned to Philip II's son, the future Louis VIII, for help, offering him the English throne. The war soon settled into a stalemate. The King became ill and died on the night of 18 October 1216, leaving the nine-year-old Henry III as his heir.

Although the Charter of 1215 was a failure as a peace treaty, it was resurrected under the new government of the young Henry III as a way of drawing support away from the rebel faction. On his deathbed, King John appointed a council of thirteen executors to help Henry reclaim the kingdom, and requested that his son be placed into the guardianship of William Marshal, one of the most famous knights in England.  William knighted the boy, and Cardinal Guala Bicchieri, the papal legate to England, then oversaw his coronation at Gloucester Cathedral on 28 October.

It would not be until 1217 that peace was nominally restored in England with Henry confirmed on the throne and a modified version of the Charter adopted (but only occasionally and inconsistently adhered to).  The primary reason the conflict ended was the real concern that  Louis would gain the throne of England and, in effect, incorporate the nation into a larger French state once he succeeded to that throne, without any guarantee concessions.  The rebel barons began to defect to Henry when they realized that they might have to face a powerful, perhaps indomitable, French monarch rather than a relatively weak English one still in his minority.

Thus, while many of the principles set out in Magna Carta were subsequently repeated and enhanced in subsequent documents and eventually adopted as formal laws, the Great Charter was, essentially, a failure in that it neither produced the hoped for peace nor resulted in more than a token acceptance by King John.  The Pope's declaration that the Charter was null and void was never "reversed" by any authority - Magna Carta effectively ceased to be enforceable on August 24, 2015, two months and nine days after it was sealed.


0 Comments

August 21, 1772 – King Gustav III completes his coup d'état by adopting a new Constitution, ending half a century of parliamentary rule in Sweden and installing himself as an enlightened despot.

8/21/2021

0 Comments

 
PictureGustav III of Sweden
Can a king seize power from a democratically elected government in order to advance the Rule of Law?  As peculiar as this notion sounds, it is effectively what happened in Sweden in 1772.  At least that is what was intended.  In practice, the corrupt elected government that was replaced by the "enlighten despotism" of the monarchy fell victim to the same foibles of the parliament it replaces.

Sweden's Constitution of 1772 (Swedish: regeringsform, "Instrument of Government") took effect through a bloodless coup d'état, the Revolution of 1772, carried out by Gustav III, who had become king in 1771. It established once again a division of power between the parliament and the king. The period came to be known as the Gustavian era. This was a response to a perceived harm wrought upon Sweden by a half-century of parliamentarism during the country's Age of Liberty practiced according to the Instrument of Government (1719), as many members of the Swedish parliament then used to be bribed by foreign powers.

Formally, the 1772 Constitution was adopted by the Parliament (Riksdag) on 21 August 1772, but this took place as members of the Parliament and the Privy Council were under threat by the royal garrison on order by King Gustav III outside of Stockholm Palace, where the Parliament and Privy Council were assembled in different parts of the palace. Leading members of the Caps party who sat in the Privy Council (as well as in Parliament) were arrested, as they were locked up in the Privy Council Room and released shortly after the adoption of the constitution. The 1772 Constitution was partly inspired by the current Enlightenment ideas of separation of powers by Montesquieu, but also based on earlier traditions in Sweden, especially from the era of King Gustav II Adolf, and two of the offices of the ancient Great Officers of the Realm were revived.

King Gustav III also cherished other Enlightenment ideas (as an enlighted despot) and repealed torture, liberated agricultural trade, diminished the use of death penalty etc. The somewhat later Freedom of the Press Act of 1774, a part of the constitutional law and largely edited by Gustav III, was actually commended by Voltaire. The earlier first Freedom of the Press Act of 1766 was repealed by the Constitution in 1772.  

The outcome of the constitution and its deliberately vague formulations, partly attributable to it being written in haste, was however a more or less authoritarian political system more weighted in favor of the king's power. In 1789 it was amended in a still more autocratic direction by the Union and Security Act.  In theory, the king was required to "listen" to the privy council of the parliament, but in practice "listening" did not equate with accepting the advice of the elected government.  In certain matters the council did have the power to veto an act by the king, but only on a unanimous vote, which was difficulty to achieve.  The king did require approval of the parliament to raise taxes, enact new laws and declare war, but again the practice was to present these matters to the parliament as fait accomplis.   

So was the 1772 Constitution a better expression of the Rule of Law than the 1720 constitution under which a corrupt parliament was ruining the Swedish economy and frittering away its sovereignty?  Arguably it was.  While the king did abuse his power, he also instituted reforms that benefited the people.  Ultimately, however, the failure of the crown to honor the ideals of the constitution led to its downfall.   The 1772 Constitution was replaced by the 1809 Instrument of Government following the defeat in the Finnish War and the removal of King Gustav IV Adolf from the throne.




0 Comments

August 18, 1612 – The trial of the Pendle witches, one of England's most famous witch trials, begins at Lancaster Assizes.

8/18/2021

0 Comments

 
PictureTwo of the accused witches: Anne Whittle (Chattox) and her daughter Anne Redferne. Illustration by John Gilbert from the 1854 edition of William Harrison Ainsworth's The Lancashire Witches. The depiction of Chattox in traditional witches garb and her daughter in fashionable clothing is almost certainly inaccurate.
Most American are familiar with the Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts either from an American history class in school or Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, though many may not know that the latter is actually an allegory about McCarthyism.  What most American's don't realize is that witch trials were not an aberration of colonial Puritan society, but were in fact common through out much of history and continue in some cultures even today.

 The term "trial" is often applied to proceedings against alleged witches, and Miller's play presents the Salem proceedings in a trial format familiar to modern society -- but as noted, this was a convention meant to convey his underlying theme of the political atmosphere of the 1950s.  The more accurate term preferred by historians and sociologists is "witch hunt" and the related term "with purge."  

Although virtually all cultures in recorded history have experienced witch hunts, the term is most commonly applied to the classical period of witch-hunts in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America that took place in the Early Modern period or about 1450 to 1750, spanning the upheavals of the Reformation and the Thirty Years' War, resulting in an estimated 35,000 to 100,000 executions.  Number are difficult to be registered with any certainty because many witch hunts were subsequently recognized as grave miscarriages of justice and were quietly excised from local records while others were undertaken with any governing authority to record the occurrence in the first instance.

While some sociologists have expressed the view that Early Modern witch hunts have a common origin with lynch mobs, race riots, religious intolerance movements such as the Inquisition and other forms of mob violence, the general view is that they have a distinct difference from most other forms of vigilante actions.  Specifically what distinguishes a witch hunt from these other forms of societal violence is that the victims are members of the community that is meting out the punishment.  Vigilantism, whether racial or religious, is usually directed at "the other," where as witch hunts are directed at "the enemy within."  

Thus, while pogroms against Jewish communities were often portrayed as justified by the supposed black arts practiced by members of that faith, these were not true "witch hunts."   Similarly, allegations that slaves practiced "voodoo" or other forms of evil magic were more often convenient excuses for racial violence.  On factor that is common in witch hunts is there tendency to focus on social class as a factor, though there is no consistency in whether the suspect class is the wealthy, the educated, or the indigent.  Accordingly, in one instance a town might rise up against the wealthy merchants, arguing that their success was not in keeping with Christian virtues of charity and modesty, while in another the people might be stirred up against the poor and criminal classes, whose degraded condition was presumed to be for want of sufficient piety.  The educated were often the targets of witch hunts because their philosophical views and scientific pursuits were often viewed as unnatural or contrary to Christian values.

The witch trials in Early Modern Europe came in waves and then subsided. There were trials in the 15th and early 16th centuries, but then the witch scare went into decline, before becoming a major issue again and peaking in the 17th century; particularly during the Thirty Years War, which was essentially religious in nature, albeit one in which religion was a proxy for political interest. What had previously been a belief that some people possessed supernatural abilities (which were sometimes used to protect the people), now became a sign of a pact between the people with supernatural abilities and the devil. To justify the killings, Protestant Christianity and its proxy secular institutions deemed witchcraft as being associated to wild Satanic ritual parties in which there was naked dancing and cannibalistic infanticide (an accusation often leveled at Jews during the Middle Ages and Renaissance). It was also seen as heresy for going against the first of the ten commandments ("You shall have no other gods before me") or as violating majesty, in this case referring to the divine majesty, not the worldly. Further scripture was also frequently cited, especially the Exodus decree that "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" (Exodus 22:18), which many supported.

The trials of the Pendle witches in 1612 are among the most famous witch trials in English history, and some of the best recorded of the 17th century. The twelve accused lived in the area surrounding Pendle Hill in Lancashire, and were charged with the murders of ten people by the use of witchcraft.  The accused witches were members of two families who were in effect competitors in the begging game - that is, they essentially earned their living by presenting themselves as crippled or otherwise unsuitable for work and seeking alms -- and also in selling charms, healing potions, and likely also fortunetelling.  They were also not above petty thievery and extortion by threatening to use witchcraft to harm the victim if not paid for protection.  While these activities are often associated with "travelling folk" and other itinerate peoples, the two families in this instance were headed by widows who had apparently turned to these disreputable practices out of necessity.  By the time of the witch hunt, each matriarch was in her 80s, one going by the "witch name" of Demdike and the other by Chattox, though whether these were names they had chosen or which were bestowed by others  is not certain.  Both had been regarded as witches for as much as fifty years and had been tolerated, perhaps even celebrated, for their alleged powers.

The incident that began the witch hunt occurred on March 21, 1612, when Demdike's granddaughter, Alizon Device, encountered John Law, a pedlar from Halifax, and asked him for some pins. Seventeenth-century metal pins were handmade and relatively expensive, but they were frequently needed for magical purposes, such as in healing – particularly for treating warts – divination, and for love magic, which may have been why Alizon was so keen to get hold of them and why Law was so reluctant to sell them to her. Whether she meant to buy them, as she claimed, and Law refused to undo his pack for such a small transaction, or whether she had no money and was begging for them, as Law's son Abraham claimed, is unclear. A few minutes after their encounter Alizon saw Law stumble and fall, perhaps because he suffered a stroke; he managed to regain his feet and reach a nearby inn.[18] Initially Law made no accusations against Alizon, but she appears to have been convinced of her own powers; when Abraham Law took her to visit his father a few days after the incident, she reportedly confessed, and asked for his forgiveness. 

This event attracted the attention of Roger Nowell, the local Justice of the Peace, who commenced an investigation of Demdike's family and associates.  In turn, Demdike's family was quick to level accusations at Chattox and her clan - possibly for revenge or in the hope of deflecting suspicion, and likely both.  The result however, was that members and associates of both families were accused of witchcraft, including the two matriarchs.  Most gave confessions, likely under torture, and were bound over for "trial" at the summer assizes.

All but two were tried at Lancaster Assizes on 18–19 August 1612, along with the Samlesbury witches and others, in a series of trials that have become known as the Lancashire witch trials.  One was tried at York Assizes on 27 July 1612, and another died in prison. Of the eleven who went to trial – nine women and two men – ten were found guilty and executed by hanging; one was found not guilty.

The official publication of the proceedings by the clerk to the court, Thomas Potts, in his The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster, and the number of witches hanged together – nine at Lancaster and one at York – make the trials unusual for England at that time. It has been estimated that all the English witch trials between the early 15th and early 18th centuries resulted in fewer than 500 executions; this series of trials accounts for more than two per cent of that total.  By way of contrast, in Germany and other European states, witch purges - the primary distinction being that all pretense of "trial" was dispensed with and the witch hunter and his crew would simply enter a community, hear accusations and carry out summary executions - could result in 500 deaths in a single season.


In England, witch-hunting would reach its apex in 1644 to 1647 due to the efforts of Puritan Matthew Hopkins. Although operating without an official Parliament commission, Hopkins (calling himself Witchfinder General) and his accomplices charged hefty fees to towns during the English Civil War. Hopkins' witch-hunting spree was brief but significant: 300 convictions and deaths are attributed to his work. Hopkins wrote a book on his methods, describing his fortuitous beginnings as a witch-hunter, the methods used to extract confessions, and the tests he employed to test the accused: stripping them naked to find the Witches' mark, the "swimming" test, and pricking the skin. The swimming test, which included throwing a witch, who was strapped to a chair, into a vat of water to see if she floated or dunking her into a pond, lake or river strapped to a chair on a pivot arm, was actually challenged for its legal validity and found to be unreliable in 1645; contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence that accused witches were drowned as a result of these tests. The 1647 book, The Discovery of Witches, soon became an influential legal text. The book was used in the American colonies as early as May 1647, when Margaret Jones was executed for witchcraft in Massachusetts, the first of 17 people executed for witchcraft in the Colonies from 1647 to 1663.

Witch-hunts began to occur in North America while Hopkins was hunting witches in England. In 1645, forty-six years before the notorious Salem witch trials, Springfield, Massachusetts experienced America's first accusations of witchcraft when husband and wife Hugh and Mary Parsons accused each other of witchcraft. In America's first witch trial, Hugh was found innocent, while Mary was acquitted of witchcraft but she was still sentenced to be hanged as punishment for the death of her child. She died in prison.[65] About eighty people throughout England's Massachusetts Bay Colony were accused of practicing witchcraft; thirteen women and two men were executed in a witch-hunt that occurred throughout New England and lasted from 1645–1663. The Salem witch trials followed in 1692–1693.



0 Comments

August 17, 1836 – British parliament accepts registration of births, marriages and deaths.

8/17/2021

0 Comments

 
PictureHenry Phillpotts, the Anglican Bishop of Exeter was one of the most vocal opponents of the Marriage Act of 1836 which extended religious freedom in the United Kingdom by recognizing marriages performed in non-Anglican churches
In the modern world, the idea that the government is responsible for maintaining "vital records" is a given.  But it was not always so.  The recordation births, deaths, and especially marriages, was either the province of religious authorities or depended on family records, or in lieu of a written record, family memory.  Prior to 1753 in England and Wales, the principal source of vital record was the parish church registry -- and this meant the registry of the Church of England, with some limited recognition of the record of Jewish Synagogues.


Historically, the law of marriage developed differently in Scotland to other jurisdictions in the United Kingdom as a consequence of the differences in Scots law and role of the separate established Church of Scotland. These differences led to a tradition of couples from England and Wales eloping to Scotland, most famously to marry at border towns such as Gretna Green. 

The Clandestine Marriages Act 1753, long title "An Act for the Better Preventing of Clandestine Marriage", popularly known as Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act (citation 26 Geo. II. c. 33), was the first statutory legislation in England and Wales to require a formal ceremony of marriage. It came into force on 25 March 1754. The Act was precipitated by a dispute about the validity of a Scottish marriage, although pressure to address the problem of clandestine marriage had been growing for some time.

The difficulty with the Clandestine Marriages Act was that it formalized as law the practice recognizing only marriages performed in Church of England parishes, Jewish Temples, and, in recognition of the growing influence of the Society of Friends, "Quaker marriage," it also rendered marriages in Catholic and dissenter (i.e. Protestant) churches and those of all other non-Christian ceremonies as not legally recognized.  It also did not end the practice of Scottish marriage because it's effect was to legitimize marriages performed in Scotland in accord with Scot's law.

Another aspect of the law that was unpopular was that it imposed punishments on the clergyman who performed a marriage that did not comport with the law.  A similar act in the Isle of Man (an independent state also ruled by the English monarch) punished clergy from abroad, who were convicted of conducting marriages in breach of the Manx Marriage Act's requirements to be pilloried and have their ears cropped, before being imprisoned, fined and deported.

The result was that in order to have a "legal" marriage - a new concept at the time - required many couples, especially Catholics, to marry twice, once in their own faith ceremony, and again in a perfunctory ceremony performed by a Church of England clergyman.  When asked why the Catholic Church was recommending that its parishioners marry in an Anglican church, one priest  "declared gloomily that almost every day the wife of an Irish laborer was deserted by her husband and could get no redress" through the courts because the marriage was not legal.
The Marriage Act 1836, adopted on August 17, 1836, allowed marriages to be legally registered in buildings belonging to other religious groups. Religious groups could apply for registration for their buildings with the Registrar General and subsequently could conduct weddings if a Registrar and two witnesses were present.

The Act was not without its critics, however.  One of the most vocal opponents of the bill was Henry Phillpotts, the Anglican Bishop of Exeter. The Times of 13 October 1836 reports that he denounced the bill as being "a disgrace to British legislation. [It] is pretended to be called for to prevent clandestine marriages, but I think it will greatly facilitate such proceedings. Not solemnized by the church of England, may be celebrated without entering into a consecrated building, may be contracted by anybody, and will be equally valid, whether it takes place in the house of God, or in the house of a registering clerk, one of the lowest functionaries of the state. The parties may take one another for better and for worse, without calling God to witness their plighted troth. No blessing sought; no solemn vows of mutual fidelity; no religious solemnity whatever."




0 Comments

August 16, 1819 – Peterloo Massacre: Seventeen people die and over 600 are injured in cavalry charges at a public meeting at St. Peter's Field, Manchester, England.

8/16/2021

0 Comments

 
PictureCaricature by George Cruikshank depicting the charge upon the rally
The Peterloo Massacre took place at St Peter's Field, Manchester, Lancashire, England on Monday 16 August 1819. Eighteen people died when cavalry charged into a crowd of around 60,000 people who had gathered to demand the reform of parliamentary representation.

After the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 there was an acute economic slump, accompanied by chronic unemployment and harvest failure due to the Year Without a Summer, and worsened by the Corn Laws, which kept the price of bread high. At that time only around 11% of adult males had the vote, very few of them in the industrial north, which was worst hit. Reformers identified parliamentary reform as the solution and a mass campaign to petition parliament for manhood suffrage gained three-quarters of a million signatures in 1817 but was flatly rejected by the House of Commons. When a second slump occurred in early 1819, radical reformers sought to mobilize huge crowds to force the government to back down. The movement was particularly strong in the north-west of England, where the Manchester Patriotic Union organized a mass rally in August 1819, addressed by well-known radical orator Henry Hunt.

Shortly after the meeting began, local magistrates called on the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry to arrest Hunt and several others on the platform with him. The Yeomanry charged into the crowd, knocking down a woman and killing a child, and finally apprehended Hunt. Cheshire Magistrates' chairman William Hulton then summoned the 15th Hussars to disperse the crowd. They charged with sabres drawn, and between nine and seventeen people were killed and four to seven hundred injured in the ensuing confusion. The event was first labelled the "Peterloo massacre" by the radical Manchester Observer newspaper in a bitterly ironic reference to the bloody Battle of Waterloo which had taken place four years earlier.

Historian Robert Poole has called the Peterloo Massacre 'the bloodiest political event of the 19th century in English soil', and 'a political earthquake in the northern powerhouse of the industrial revolution'. The London and national papers shared the horror felt in the Manchester region, but Peterloo's immediate effect was to cause the government to pass the Six Acts, which were aimed at suppressing any meetings for the purpose of radical reform. It also led indirectly to the foundation of the Manchester Guardian newspaper. In a survey conducted by The Guardian in 2006, Peterloo came second to the Putney Debates as the event from radical British history that most deserved a proper monument or a memorial.

For some time, Peterloo was commemorated only by a blue plaque, criticized as being inadequate and referring only to the "dispersal by the military" of an assembly. In 2007, the City Council replaced the blue plaque with a red plaque with less euphemistic wording, explicitly referring to "a peaceful rally" being "attacked by armed cavalry" and mentioning "15 deaths and over 600 injuries". In 2019, on the 200th anniversary of the massacre, Manchester City Council inaugurated a new Peterloo Memorial by the artist Jeremy Deller, featuring eleven concentric circles of local stone engraved with the names of the dead and the places from which the victims came.

0 Comments

August 8, 1942 – Quit India Movement is launched in India against the British rule in response to Mohandas Gandhi's call for swaraj or complete independence.

8/8/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
The Quit India Movement, also known as the August Movement, was a movement launched at the Bombay session of the All India Congress Committee by Mahatma Gandhi on 8 August 1942, during World War II, demanding an end to British rule in India.

After the failure of the Cripps Mission to secure Indian support for the British war effort, Gandhi made a call to Do or Die in his Quit India speech delivered in Bombay on 8 August 1942 at the Gowalia Tank Maidan. The All India Congress Committee launched a mass protest demanding what Gandhi called "An Orderly British Withdrawal" from India. Even though it was at war, the British were prepared to act. Almost the entire leadership of the Indian National Congress was imprisoned without trial within hours of Gandhi's speech. Most spent the rest of the war in prison and out of contact with the masses. The British had the support of the Viceroy's Council (which had a majority of Indians), of the All India Muslim League, the Hindu Mahasabha, the princely states, the Indian Imperial Police, the British Indian Army, and the Indian Civil Service. Many Indian businessmen profiting from heavy wartime spending did not support the Quit India Movement. Many students paid more attention to Subhas Chandra Bose, who was in exile and supporting the Axis Powers. The only outside support came from the Americans, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt pressured Prime Minister Winston Churchill to give in to some of the Indian demands. The Quit India campaign was effectively crushed. The British refused to grant immediate independence, saying it could happen only after the war had ended.

Sporadic small-scale violence took place around the country and the British arrested tens of thousands of leaders, keeping them imprisoned until 1945. In terms of immediate objectives, Quit India failed because of heavy-handed suppression, weak coordination and the lack of a clear-cut program of action. However, the British government realized that India was ungovernable in the long run and the question for the postwar era became how to exit gracefully and peacefully.

0 Comments

August 1, 1291 – The Old Swiss Confederacy is formed with the signature of the Federal Charter.

8/1/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
The Federal Charter or Letter of Alliance is one of the earliest constitutional documents of Switzerland. A treaty of alliance from 1291 between the cantons of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden, the Charter is one of a series of alliances from which the Old Swiss Confederacy emerged. In the 19th and 20th century, after the establishment of the Swiss federal state, the Charter became the founding document of Switzerland in the popular imagination.

The Charter documents the Eternal Alliance of the League of the Three Forest Cantons, the union of three cantons in what is now central Switzerland. It is dated to early August 1291, which in the 20th century inspired the date of Swiss National Day, 1 August. Written in Latin, the Charter makes reference to a previous (lost or unwritten) pact. 

The Alliance was concluded between the people of the alpine areas of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden (homines vallis Uranie universitasque vallis de Switz ac communitas hominum Intramontanorum Vallis Inferioris). The participants are referred to as conspirati and (synonymously) coniurati, traditionally translated in German as "Eidgenossen" (and in English as "Confederates").

The Charter was probably intended to ensure legal certainty after the death of Rudolf I of Habsburg on 15 July 1291. The first two paragraphs commit all three communities to the joint defense of the three valleys. The remainder of the Charter concerns judicial matters: It calls for arbitration in the case of conflicts, rejects foreign judges, establishes the death penalty for murderers and exile for arsonists, and commands obedience to judges and judicial verdicts.

Here is the complete text translated to English:

IN THE NAME OF GOD - AMEN. Honor and the public weal are promoted when leagues are concluded for the proper establishment of quiet and peace.

Therefore, know all men, that the people of the valley of Uri, the democracy of the valley of Schwyz, and the community of the Lower Valley of Unterwalden, seeing the malice of the age, in order that they may better defend themselves, and their own, and better preserve them in proper condition, have promised in good faith to assist each other with aid, with every counsel and every favor, with person and goods, within the valley and without, with might and main, against one and all, who may inflict upon any one of them any violence, molestation or injury, or may plot any evil against their persons or goods. And in every case each community has promised to succor the other when necessary, at its own expense, as far as needed in order to withstand the attacks of evil-doers, and to avenge injuries; to this end they have sworn a solemn oath to keep this without guile, and to renew by these presents the ancient form of the league, also confirmed by an oath.

Yet in such a manner that every man, according to his rank, shall obey and serve his overlord as it behooves him.

We have also vowed, decreed and ordained in common council and by unanimous consent, that we will accept or receive no judge in the aforesaid valleys, who shall have obtained his office for any price, or for money in any way whatever, or one who shall not be a native or a resident with us. But if dissension shall arise between any of the Eidgenossen (confederates; Eid = oath, Genosse = fellow, comrade), the most prudent amongst the confederates shall come forth to settle the difficulty between the parties, as shall seem right to them; and whichever party rejects their verdict shall be held an adversary by the other confederates.

Furthermore it has been established between them that he who deliberately kills another without provocation, shall, if caught, lose his life, as his wicked guilt requires, unless he be able to prove his innocence of said crime; and if perchance he escape, let him never return. Those who conceal and protect said criminal shall be banished from the valley, until they be expressly recalled by the confederates.

But if any one of the confederates, by day, or in the silence of the night, shall maliciously injure another by fire, he shall never again be considered a fellow-countryman. If any man protect and defend the said evil-doer, he shall render satisfaction to the one who has suffered damage.

Furthermore, if any one of the confederates shall spoil another of his goods, or injure him in any way, the goods of the guilty one, if recovered within the valleys, shall be seized in order to pay damages to the injured person, according to justice.

Furthermore, no man shall seize another's goods for debt, unless he be evidently his debtor or surety, and this shall only be done with the special permission of his judge.

Moreover, every man shall obey his judge, and if necessary, must himself indicate the judge in the valley, before whom he ought properly to appear. And if any one rebels against a verdict, and, in consequence of his obstinacy, any one of the confederates is injured, all the confederates are bound to compel the culprit to give satisfaction.

But if war or discord arise amongst any of the confederates and one party of the disputants refuse to accept the verdict of the judge or to give satisfaction, the confederates are bound to defend the other party.

The above-written statutes, decreed for the common welfare and benefit, shall endure forever, God willing. In testimony of which, at the request of the aforesaid parties, the present charter has been drawn up and confirmed with the seals of the aforesaid three communities and valleys.

So done in the year of the Lord 1291 at the beginning of the month of August.



0 Comments

July 29, 1805 – Alexis de Tocqueville, French historian and philosopher, is born in Paris

7/29/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
Alexis Charles Henri Clérel, comte de Tocqueville (29 July 1805 – 16 April 1859), colloquially known as de Tocqueville, was a French aristocrat, diplomat, political scientist, political philosopher and historian. He is best known for his works Democracy in America (appearing in two volumes, 1835 and 1840) and The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856). In both, he analyzed the improved living standards and social conditions of individuals as well as their relationship to the market and state in Western societies. Democracy in America was published after Tocqueville's travels in the United States and is today considered an early work of sociology and political science.

Tocqueville was active in French politics, first under the July Monarchy (1830–1848) and then during the Second Republic (1849–1851) which succeeded the February 1848 Revolution. He retired from political life after Louis Napoléon Bonaparte's 2 December 1851 coup and thereafter began work on The Old Regime and the Revolution. Tocqueville argued the importance of the French Revolution was to continue the process of modernizing and centralizing the French state which had begun under King Louis XIV. The failure of the Revolution came from the inexperience of the deputies who were too wedded to abstract Enlightenment ideals.

Tocqueville was a classical liberal who advocated parliamentary government and was skeptical of the extremes of democracy. During his time in parliament, he sat on the centre-left, but the complex and restless nature of his liberalism has led to contrasting interpretations and admirers across the political spectrum. Regarding his political position, Tocqueville wrote "the word 'left' is [. . .] the word I wanted to attach to my name so that it would remain attached to it forever".

In 1831, Tocqueville obtained from the July Monarchy a mission to examine prisons and penitentiaries in the United States and proceeded there with his lifelong friend Gustave de Beaumont. While he did visit some prisons, Tocqueville traveled widely in the United States and took extensive notes about his observations and reflections.He returned within nine months and published a report, but the real result of his tour was De la démocratie en Amérique, which appeared in 1835. Beaumont also wrote an account of their travels in Jacksonian America: Marie or Slavery in the United States (1835).

In Democracy in America I, published in 1835, Tocqueville wrote of the New World and its burgeoning democratic order. Observing from the perspective of a detached social scientist, Tocqueville wrote of his travels through the United States in the early 19th century when the Market Revolution, Western expansion and Jacksonian democracy were radically transforming the fabric of American life.

As emphasized in Introduction to Book I, the purpose of the work is somewhat beyond the American democracy itself, which was rather an illustration to the philosophical claim that democracy is an effect of industrialization. In a sense, Tocqueville anticipated Marx’s viewpoint that history is determined by development and changes of socio-economic conditions — the so-called formations that are described by specific productive forces and relations of production. This focus on the philosophy of history justifies a certain ambiguity in using the word 'democracy' and explains why Tocqueville even ignores the intents of the Founding Fathers of the United States regarding the American political system.

Tocqueville was an ardent supporter of liberty. "I have a passionate love for liberty, law, and respect for rights", he wrote. "I am neither of the revolutionary party nor of the conservative. [. . .] Liberty is my foremost passion". He wrote of "Political Consequences of the Social State of the Anglo-Americans" by saying: "But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom".

His view on government reflects his belief in liberty and the need for individuals to be able to act freely while respecting others' rights. Of centralized government, he wrote that it "excels in preventing, not doing".

Tocqueville continues to comment on equality by saying: "Furthermore, when citizens are all almost equal, it becomes difficult for them to defend their independence against the aggressions of power. As none of them is strong enough to fight alone with advantage, the only guarantee of liberty is for everyone to combine forces. But such a combination is not always in evidence".


0 Comments

July 26, 1847 – Liberia declares its independence.

7/26/2021

0 Comments

 
PictureFlag of Liberia
On July 26, 1847, the Americo-Liberian colonists of the Pepper Coast of Africa declared their independence , adopting a constitution that established the first modern republic on the African continent.  The Pepper Coast was nominally a American Colony at the time, though British, Dutch and Portuguese traders also maintained trading posts there.  American influence in the region began in the early 19th century with a settlement of the American Colonization Society (ACS), which believed black people would face better chances for freedom and prosperity in Africa than in the United States. Between 1822 and the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, more than 15,000 freed and free-born people of color who faced social and legal oppression in the U.S., along with 3,198 Afro-Caribbeans, relocated to Liberia.  Although many succumbed to tropical diseases and violent encounters with native African tribes, the resettled former slaves developed a society that adopted the principles democracy based on the example of the United States.

he United Kingdom was the first country to recognize Liberia's independence. The United States did not recognize Liberia until 1862, after the Southern states, which had strong political power in the American government, declared their secession and the formation of the Confederacy.  The leadership of the new nation consisted largely of the Americo-Liberians, who initially established political and economic dominance in the coastal areas that the ACS had purchased; they maintained relations with U.S. contacts in developing these areas and the resulting trade. 

There was a decline in production of Liberian goods in the late 19th century, and the government struggled financially, resulting in indebtedness on a series of international loans. On July 16, 1892, Martha Ann Erskine Ricks met Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle and presented her a handmade quilt, Liberia's first diplomatic gift. Born into slavery in Tennessee, Ricks said, "I had heard it often, from the time I was a child, how good the Queen had been to my people—to slaves—and how she wanted us to be free."

Liberia remained neutral during World War I until August 4, 1917 upon declaring war on Germany. Subsequently, it was one of 32 nations to take part in the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919, which ended the war and established the League of Nations; Liberia was among the few African and non-Western nations to participate in both the conference and the founding of the League.

In the mid-20th century Liberia gradually began to modernize with American assistance. During World War II the United States made major infrastructure improvements to support its military efforts in Africa and Europe against Germany. It built the Freeport of Monrovia and Roberts International Airport under the Lend-Lease program before its entry into the Second World War.

After the war, President William Tubman encouraged foreign investment, with Liberia achieving the second-highest rate of economic growth in the world during the 1950s. The country also began to take a more active role in international affairs: It was a founding member of the United Nations in 1945 and became a vocal critic of the South African apartheid regime. As one of the few African nations to escape colonization, Liberia also served as a proponent both of African independence from European colonial powers and of Pan-Africanism, and helped to fund the Organization of African Unity.

In the late-20th century, tension between indigenous and repatriated-descended Liberians resulted in two civil wars and periods of military rule.  Liberia became a pariah state because of its trade in "blood diamonds."  In 2003, pro-democracy forces gained the upper hand and established a new democratic state.

0 Comments

July 25, 1901 - Mohammed Helmy is born in Khartoum, Sudan

7/25/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
Mohammed Helmy was born in British-occupied Sudan on July 25, 1901 to an Egyptian father and German mother.  As a young man he traveled to Germany to study medicine and became a doctor working in the Robert Koch Hospital in Berlin, becoming head of the department of urology.  In 1938, he was fired along with all other non-Aryans.  Increasingly vocal in his criticism of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party, Helmly was imprisoned twice, and following his release was under an effective house arrest. 

Helmy was conscripted for service in the local health corps, and used his position to provide medical excuses for foreign laborers to leave Germany and for Germans to avoid military service. He worked to secretly treat Jewish citizens and help hide them from persecution., including Anna Boris, a patient whom he successfully hid from the authorities until the end of the war. At one point, when Helmy's activities were close to discovery, he and Boros concocted a scheme to make it appear that she had duped him - a ruse that played on the Gestapo's belief that Helmy, as a "Hamite" was innately unintelligent.    

Helmy died in 1982 in Berlin.  He was subsequently named as one of the Righteous Among the Nations, the roll of honor for non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to protect Jews from the Nazis.

0 Comments
<<Previous
Forward>>

    CTROL Blog

    This blog will be used by Center Staff to post articles addressing issues concerning the Rule of Law and how it is taught and understood in our communities, nation, and world.

    Categories

    All
    American Revolution
    Capital Punishment
    Civil Disobedience
    Civil Law
    Civil Rights Movement
    Colonialism
    Criminal Law
    Death Penalty
    Economic Equltiy
    Economics
    Editorials
    Educators
    Fractured History
    Freedom Of Religion
    Freedom Of Speech
    Gender Equality
    Government
    Historical Sources For The Rule Of Law
    Immigration
    Indigenous People
    International
    Jim Crow
    Labor
    Laws
    Literature
    Miscarriage Of Justice
    Nativism
    Property Rights
    Race Relations
    Riots
    Slavery
    Taxation
    The Holocaust
    Today In The History Of The Rule Of Law
    Trials
    United States Supreme Court
    US Constitution
    Vigilantism
    Voting Rights
    Women Of Note
    World War II

    RSS Feed

About

Vision
Rule of Law Project
Rule of Law Blog
​Site Map
Navigation Help

Offerings

Educator Resources
Student Resources
Attorney Engagement
Community Engagement

Contact and Support CTROL

Contact
Support
Privacy Policy
​Contact the Webmaster
© COPYRIGHT 2009-2021. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.