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Imagining the Foundations of Law in Britain: Magna Carta in 2015

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Abstract

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The 800th anniversary of Magna Carta offers a study in how the foundations of law have been visualized in the United Kingdom. The fact that the British sense of identity as a free nation has historically been based on its commitment to “unwritten” law means that it lacks a foundational text and has hence traditionally figured the law through a plurality of images without a core. The absence of a singular image on which to focus national identity became acute in the early twenty-first century as the multiplication of sources of legality and justice in a globalized and multicultural world put pressure on the United Kingdom's sense of sovereignty. The tensions manifest in this crisis can be seen across a range of images produced for the anniversary, each bearing different values. Yet the rival narratives are able to coexist in the same commemorative space, their differences subsumed within Magna Carta's status as a postmodern “icon,” the consecration of the reciprocal identification between the protection of liberty and the rule of law. The Article concludes by examining a court battle over land on the borders of the commemorative site, and at another commissioned artwork. Both, in their different ways, bring into view the boundaries and bonds imposed by the rule of law that the iconic image elides.

Type
Law's Visuality, Theatricality, and Affectivity
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 by German Law Journal, Inc. 

References

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76 The Zong became calm on its journey to the Caribbean and according to the owners, with water running out and disease spreading, the crew had, “of necessity,” thrown the slaves overboard in order to save the ship. Returning to Britain, the owners, the Gregson syndicate, claimed compensation for loss of cargo against their insurers. In the first trial, in 1783, the jury found against the underwriters on the grounds that the transported Africans were indeed a form of property, similar to a cargo of horses. On appeal, however, Lord Chief Justice Mansfield agreed with the insurers, who maintained, according to legal custom, that only when a slave is killed in the course of suppressing an insurrection was compensation due to the owners. Although a retrial was ordered, the owners dropped their case. The affair played an important role in the growing campaign to outlaw the slave trade in Britain. Cf. James Walvin, The Zong: A Massacre, the Law and the End of Slavery (2011).Google Scholar

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122 Similar constitutional issues arose in the U.S. when on February 9, 2017, the Ninth Federal District Appeals Court upheld the suspension ordered by two state courts of the President's Executive Order banning the entry into the U.S. of individuals from a group of Muslim-majority countries. State of Washington and State of Minnesota v. Trump, No. 17–35105 (9th Cir. Feb. 9, 2017) (order granting Motion for Stay), https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2017/02/09/17-35105.pdf).Google Scholar

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