Fennie pray a cost in the news

and there's to all of physical

and bless you all of physical.

He bless you, Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy Podcast, brought to you with the support of the Philosophy Department at Kings

College London and the LMU in Munich. Online at W.W.

History of Philosophy. Net. Today's episode, What Pleases the Prince, the Rule of Law.

The Most Famous Thirteenth Century Political document was not written by any philosopher. It is of course the Magna Carta, forced upon King John by the English barons in the year 1215. Its influence has been far-reaching its symbolic importance, hard to overestimate.

To give just one example, the American state of Massachusetts, where I grew up, adopted a seal

in 1775 showing a man holding a sword in one hand and a copy of

Magna Carta in the other.

Though many of its provisions are so dated as to be irrelevant to us today. People still point to its

39th chapter which guarantees due process of law for all freemen. This is a hint at its

philosophical significance which lies above all in its attempt to constrain

the king himself by requiring him to submit to the law. Nowadays, we take it for granted

that our leaders are subject to the law, even if we can't take it for granted that they will always follow the law.

In the medieval period, though, this was not so obvious. Kings naturally promoted an ideal of absolute sovereignty and saw themselves

as the source of the law rather than as being subject to it. Yet they were rarely in the position to wield unfettered military and political power with no concern for the consent of other political players within their kingdoms.

Their supremacy was challenged on battlefields in the drawing up of documents like

the Magna Carta and in the writings of intellectuals.

As we know from our earlier look at Gration and other legal theorists, medieval ideas of law were inspired by the Roman tradition. When it came to the question of how law relates to political authority, the medieval's turned to Ulpians' digest of the law

code gathered under the Emperor Justinian.

There they could read that what pleases the prince has the force of law, and also that the prince is not bound by the law.

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