The Magna Carta: A Pivotal Document in Humanity's Rights
Alex Sohn, Habeeb Salau, James McDonald Junior Division Group Website
Our project started when we conducted a collective brainstorm on projects that affected peoples rights throughout history. We especially wanted to choose an event that has had an effect on rights throughout the history of the world, especially in the United States. After we narrowed down the projects we chose Magna Carta. When we
learned more about the Magna Carta due to research, we found that it had long lasting effects in legal philosophy in England and dynamically changed the relationship between the royal powers and the citizens. We discovered that the Magna Carta also granted rights that we use every day in our lives. After learning this we were convinced that it would be a fitting project. As we began our research we found that there were not many primary sources due to the project being in the medieval time. However, we all wanted to continue the research and we found primary sources including the original Latin transcript of the Magna Carta and a speech from Eleanor Roosevelt from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We also committed time to spending two hours a week at the library in order to find secondary sources. We were able to contact some professors in England to get interviews through the people that we met at the library. We also wanted to see how the Magna Carta affected United States of America. We talked to some judges and found out how Magna Carta affected the doctrine of due process of law. We decided to do a website because all the members of our group were extremely talented with computers and we thought that our collective skills would produce a spectacular project. Another bonus in our group was that one of our members had experience with computer coding. The main points of the Magna Carta were made into headings on our project. We realized that the website category allowed us to represent and present our ideas in a new way instead of having a plain board. Overall creating a website seemed like the best and most interesting way to represent our project. The Magna Carta is well suited for this year's theme because it was a forerunner document that promised that the rights of the citizens could not be taken away by the
government or royal authority. Prior to its passing King John and other kings before him had been able to freely infringe on the rights and lives of the baron's. These rights included free justice and due process of law, which are some of the rights that as American citizens, we exercise every day. The Magna Carta also gave way to the debate about the separation of church and state and the responsibility of the government in religious affairs. For these reasons, the Magna Carta was shown to be a groundbreaking document that resulted in dramatic changes in the rights of citizens.