From Runnymede to Philadelphia: op-ed from Alabama Supreme Court justice

This is a guest opinion column.

When Thomas Jefferson picked up his quill in the summer of 1776, he was tapping into a constitutional legacy that stretched back over five centuries. More than 800 years ago this month, a group of English barons demanded that a reluctant King John seal the Magna Carta. What began as a makeshift peace treaty to resolve baronial grievances eventually evolved into the cornerstone of English constitutional law.

From Grievance to Governance

The barons at Runnymede sought an end to arbitrary taxation and unlawful imprisonment. Crucially, they demanded the king acknowledge he was bound by the law rather than standing above it. While King John attempted to ignore the pact and the Pope quickly annulled it, the document refused to fade away. Instead, it was reissued and refined, transforming from a list of complaints into the bedrock of modern liberty.

By the time the American colonies faced their own crisis with King George III, the Magna Carta was far more than a historical artifact—it was the very language of freedom. It served as a recognized, legally established set of rights that served as the foundation for the Declaration of Independence.

The Legal Blueprint for Independence

Jefferson’s brilliance lay in his ability to move beyond abstract philosophy. While the Declaration is famous for its soaring rhetoric on equality and natural rights, it functioned as a powerful legal brief. Jefferson grounded his arguments in the precedent of the Magna Carta, proving that the colonists were not radicals seeking to invent new rights, but Englishmen defending inherited ones.

The Magna Carta’s influence is clear in the specific charges Jefferson leveled against the Crown. When the colonists cried, “No taxation without representation,” they were invoking a principle established in the Great Charter regarding the common counsel’s consent. Similarly, Jefferson’s indictment of the king for “obstructing the Administration of Justice” mirrored the Magna Carta’s demand that the crown must not “sell, deny, or delay right or justice to anyone.”

A Lasting Legacy

When King George and Parliament treated the colonists as subjects to be exploited rather than as citizens entitled to English protections, they repudiated that long constitutional history. Jefferson reframed the struggle, arguing that by violating the Magna Carta’s terms, the king had shattered the covenant of his own rule.

The Magna Carta provided the moral and legal framework that made the American Revolution not just an aspiration, but a necessary remedy. Five hundred and sixty-one years after the seal was pressed into wax at Runnymede, that same logic defined a new nation. The Great Charter’s most enduring legacy remains the fundamental principle that no one is above the law—and that when a ruler acts otherwise, the people retain the ancient right to object.

Will Sellers is an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of Alabama. He is best reached at jws@willsellers.com.