{"id":12287,"date":"2015-09-15T07:53:52","date_gmt":"2015-09-15T12:53:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=12287"},"modified":"2015-09-15T07:53:52","modified_gmt":"2015-09-15T12:53:52","slug":"who-may-use-the-kings-forest-the-meaning-of-magna-carta-commons-and-law-in-our-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=12287","title":{"rendered":"Who May Use the King’s Forest? The Meaning of Magna Carta, Commons and Law in Our Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who May Use the King’s Forest? The Meaning of Magna Carta, Commons and Law in Our Time<\/a><\/h3>\n
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The relationship between law and the commons is very much on my mind these days.\u00a0 I recently posted a four-part serialization of my strategy memo, “Reinventing Law for the Commons.”\u00a0 The following public talk, which I gave at the Heinrich Boell Foundation in Berlin on September 8, is a kind of companion piece.\u00a0 The theme: this year’s celebration of the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta and its significance for commoners today.<\/em><\/div>\n
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Thank you for inviting me to speak tonight about the 800th<\/sup>\u00a0anniversary of the Magna Carta and the significance of law for the commons.\u00a0 It\u2019s pretty amazing that anyone is still celebrating something that happened eight centuries ago!\u00a0\u00a0 Besides our memory of this event, I think it is so interesting what we have chosen to remember about this history, and what we have forgotten.<\/p>\n

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This anniversary is essentially about the signing of peace treaty on the fields of Runnymede, England, in 1215.\u00a0 The treaty settled a bloody civil war between the much-despised King John and his rebellious barons eight centuries ago.\u00a0 What was intended as an armistice was soon regarded as a larger canonical statement about the proper structure of governance.\u00a0 Amidst a lot of archaic language about medieval ways of life, Magna Carta is now seen as a landmark statement about the limited powers of the sovereign, and the rights and liberties of ordinary people.<\/p>\n

The King\u2019s acceptance of Magna Carta after a long civil war seems unbelievably distant and almost forgettable.\u00a0 How could it have anything to do with us moderns? \u00a0I think its durability and resonance have to do with our wariness about concentrated power, especially of the sovereign.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who May Use the King’s Forest? The Meaning of Magna Carta, Commons and Law in Our Time The relationship between law and the commons is very much on my mind these days.\u00a0 I recently posted a four-part serialization of my strategy memo, “Reinventing Law for the Commons.”\u00a0 The following public talk, which I gave at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[152,6551,3324,3979,6342,2382,1589,9061],"class_list":["post-12287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-commons","tag-david-bollier","tag-england","tag-governance","tag-king-john","tag-magna-carta","tag-rule-of-law","tag-sovereign-power"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12287"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12288,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12287\/revisions\/12288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}