May 15, 2025.

Perhaps in frustration, this season's writers of the saga of American history are making their symbolism increasingly obvious.

Today the story broke that a long-neglected document held by Harvard University

Law School, believed to be a cheap copy of the Magna Carta, is in fact the real document. More than 700

years ago, the Magna Carta, or Great Charter, established the concept that kings must answer to the law.

King John of England and a group of rebel barons agreed to the terms of the document on June 15, 1215, at Runnymede, a meadow a little less than an hour from London, near the River Thames.

After the king had raised taxes, barons rebelled,

insisting that he was violating established custom. There were rumors of a plot to murder the king,

and the barons armed themselves. Those two armed camps met at Runnymede, where negotiators for the

king and the barons hammered out a document with 63

clauses, mostly related to feudal customs and the way the justice system would operate.

But the document also began to articulate the principles central to modern democracies.

The Magna Carta established the writ of habeas corpus, a prohibition on unlawful imprisonment,

and the concept of the right to trial by jury.

Famously, it put into writing that,

No free man shall be seized, imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, exiled, or ruined in any way, nor in any way proceeded against,

except by the lawful judgment of his peers and the law of the land. It also provided that,

to no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice. The Magna Carta placed limits on the king's

ability to tax his subjects and establish the law as an authority apart from the king.

Anticipating the idea of checks and balances, it set up a council of barons to make sure the king obeyed the charter.

If he did not, they could seize his lands and castles until he made amends.

The original charter did not last. King John convinced the Pope to declare the document illegal

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