July 2, 2024
Remember the English history lesson about the Magna Carta, sometimes called The Great Charter? I remember my sixth grade teacher, Mr. Smith, telling us about this.
The Magna Carta was the first record of the rule of law. It was signed in 1215.
It established that the monarch and their government are not above the law. The monarch could not do whatever he pleased; he had to follow/obey the law.
When King John appealed to the Pope to negate the Magna Carta's legal status, the English barons and serfs fought back. The war that followed lasted two years.
Know that the American Constitution and Bill of Rights rests on the Magna Carta and the English fight for human rights.
The French Revolution which followed the American fight for liberty is also based on the Magna Carta and the rule of law.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights signed by all nations in 1948 as a result of the horrors of WW II also rests on the Magna Carta and the idea that no one is above the law.
In other words, "no one is above the law" is not just American, it is universal.
For you and I, ordinary, time-constrained, untrained researchers and historians, to forget how life used to be before the Magna Carta and the written laws that followed it--in France, before their revolution, not even the word awful describes the life of ordinary people—is, perhaps, understandable.
Maybe we commoners can be forgiven for forgetting why our ancestors and present-day folks fight and die for ideas like "no one is above the law".
But how can those who have spent years studying the law, and who have the life mission of practicing the law forget?
It seems that they did. The US Supreme Court Ruling of July 1, 2024, says that the president is above the law.
Using their ruling, Trump gets away with all the wrong he has and continues to do.
My Czechoslovakian grandmother would say, “May he have hell.”
What’s your opinion? Your opinion matters.