That great standard of liberty, the Magna Carta, is 810 years old this month.

Historians and political scientists have examined its provisions extensively, carefully allocating each clause to various rights and freedoms we now take for granted. Indeed, it is a fascinating inquiry to consider that so many centuries ago, various rights now considered standard and common were first tested in the body politic.

Many refer to the United States as an experiment because our Constitution created a form of government and detailed the rights of citizens in a format never before attempted. But just because something has not been tried before does not mean that the ideas underpinning the experiment are novel, untested or speculative.

Actually, the contrary is true.

In the case of Magna Carta, the terms and conditions expressed in that document had a precursor — the Charter of Liberties or Coronation Charter. That charter pre-dated Magna Carta by 115 years and established a variety of rights, beginning the process of expanding liberty, freedom, and the rule of law.

These charters and indeed our Constitution were not the result of laboratory experiments conducted by political scientists theorizing the best form of government or allocating responsibilities between people in communities. No polls were taken to sample and analyze public opinion nor were focus groups assembled to test which rights mattered most or what liberty interest must be protected and prioritized.

All these documents were based on the practical experience of balancing the relationship between the king and his various subjects. The tension between the competing interests of the nobility and the monarchy was not measured mathematically to derive a formula; rather, the tension between these interests created the written charter to manage and define their relationship. Just like a pearl is formed from grit being resisted by an oyster, these documents of liberty were created by the adversarial relationship between the governor and the governed.

Magna Carta’s parent, the Charter of Liberties, was the result of King Henry I of England needing to establish his legitimacy with his nobles, his subjects, and the Church. Henry wanted to rule to take advantage of the numerous benefits of kingship, but he had to achieve consensus for a stable realm to achieve a successful reign.

While not nearly as comprehensive as Magna Carta, the Charter of Liberties had 14 unilateral provisions for the king to essentially establish how he would govern and what rules would apply to his subjects. It was as if he were making a trade-off with his country —in return for legitimizing his claim to the throne, he would guarantee certain rights that limited his power. The plan generally worked as Henry was accepted as King and ruled effectively but frequently disregarded the Charter’s limitations.

The Charter of Liberties created an expectation of how kings and their subjects would relate to one another. The great fault of the Charter was that it had no enforcement mechanism or process for redress of a violation. But even so, the terms of the Charter were another of the initial steps taken to limit the power of the crown to serve as a marker that absolute monarchy was incompatible with English traditions.

Later, when England faced a crisis between the king and his nobles, a solution was needed to again resolve the tension between the parties. But this time, instead of a king needing to create legitimacy and stability, the nobles needed to limit the king and his abusive actions. The tension from unreasonable taxes, confiscation of property, and arbitrary actions fomented a rebellion among a large segment of nobility. This tension reached a boiling point when the nobles renounced their loyalty to the king and began military action to occupy London.

To diffuse the situation, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, inserted himself in the situation and sought accommodation. Serving as an arbitrator among all sides, he understood the tension and sought a compromise to create a peaceful resolution.

To support their position, the nobles cited their rights under the Charter of Liberties and argued that this document limited the actions of the king and created a basis for them to throw off any obligation to support him.

Rather than simply starting from scratch, Langton began drafting Magna Carta as a settlement agreement by using ideas first featured in the Charter of Liberties. After all, it had been accepted and held some precedential value among the parties.

The Magna Carta, then, used the Charter of Liberties as a basis to create a legitimacy for the sharing of power. It was not novel or based on some theoretical view of rights and responsibilities of government, but was a practical instrument, reflecting the consensus and customs of the people and enumerating various rights and responsibilities among the parties.

Magna Carta codified legal rights and remedies that already existed in practice, built upon those rights to limit the king’s power, and in the process, created a cooperative government allowing the nobles and king to work together in a pre-parliamentary council.

Almost immediately after King John signed the Magna Carta, he began to chafe under the consequences of its restraints. Not trusting the King and knowing that practical enforcement was necessary, the nobles maintained their armies in strength.

For his part, the king sought relief from the Charter by petitioning the Pope, rightly believing that limiting the power of any one absolute ruler might threaten others in a similar situation. The Pope sided with the king, and war ensued.

King John would die 18 months later, but the Magna Carta survived.

To establish legitimacy, future kings would reissue and ratify the Magna Carta in a showing of commitment, if not a pledge, to be limited by its provisions. These provisions would be expressed in other laws, charters and constitutions to provide a framework for a limited sovereign, an expansion of freedom, and a legal structure to create a stable environment for communities to grow and prosper.

Will Sellers is a graduate of Hillsdale College and was appointed by Gov. Kay Ivey as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of Alabama. He is best reached at [email protected].