Magna Carta - Edward Coke's Opinions

Edward Coke's Opinions

Among the first of respected jurists to seriously write about the great charter was Edward Coke, who influenced how Magna Carta was perceived throughout the Tudor and Stuart periods, though his views were challenged during his lifetime by Lord Ellesmere, and later in the same century by Robert Brady. Coke used the 1225 issue of the Charter.

Coke "reinterpreted or misinterpreted" Magna Carta "misconstruing its clauses anachronistically and uncritically". He would interpret liberties to be much the same as individual liberty. The historian J.C. Holt excused Coke on the grounds that the Charter and its history had itself become 'distorted'.

Coke was instrumental in framing the Petition of Right, which became a substantial supplement to Magna Carta's liberties. During the debates on the matter, Coke famously sought to deny the King's sovereign rights with the claim that "Magna Carta is such a fellow, that he will have no 'sovereign'"; he believed the statutes (not the King) were absolute.

Read more about this topic:  Magna Carta

Famous quotes containing the words edward, coke and/or opinions:

    Massachusetts sat waiting Mr. Loring’s decision.... It was really the trial of Massachusetts. Every moment that she hesitated to set this man free, every moment that she now hesitates to atone for her crime, she is convicted. The commissioner on her case is God; not Edward G. God, but simply God.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Name me, if you can, a better feeling than the one you get when you’ve half a bottle of Chivas in the bag with a gram of coke up your nose and a teenage lovely pulling off her tube top in the next seat over while you’re doing a hundred miles an hour in a suburban side street.
    —P.J. (Patrick Jake)

    The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered.
    Samuel Butler (1835–1902)