Gale Encyclopedia of American Law Volume 6 P45 fully illuminates today's leading cases, major statutes, legal terms and concepts, notable persons involved with the law, important documents and more. Legal issues are fully discussed in easy-to-understand language, including such high-profile topics as the Americans with Disabilities Act, capital punishment, domestic violence, gay and lesbian rights, physician-assisted suicide and thousands more. | 428 MAGNA CARTA It is not surprising then that the barons renounced loyalty to the king plotted his assassination and ultimately compelled his capitulation to the Magna Carta. The grievances King John promised to redress in the Magna Carta represent both the substance of the Great Charter s original meaning and its later symbolic import. The document s immediate purpose was to appease the baronial leadership. In this vein it provided that justice would not be sold denied or delayed ch. 40 and ensured that certain rights and procedures would be granted freely without risk of life or limb ch. 36 . It guaranteed the safe return of hostages lands castles and family members that had been held as security by the Crown for military service and loan agreements. The Magna Carta mandated the investigation and abolition of any ill customs established by King John ch. 48 and required that no justices constables sheriffs or bailiffs be appointed unless they know the law of the land and are willing to keep it ch. 45 . The phrase law of the land is interspersed throughout the Magna Carta and is emblematic of other abstract legal concepts contained in the Great Charter that outlasted the exigencies of 1215. Nowhere in the Great Charter is law of the land defined but a number of sections offer an early glimpse of certain constitutional liberties in embryonic form. For example the American colonies equated law of the land with due process of law a legal principle that has been the cornerstone of procedural fairness in . civil and criminal trials since the late 1700s. The due process CLAUSE of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments has been relied on by the . supreme Court as a source for substantive rights as well including the right to privacy. Chapter 39 of the Magna Carta linked the law-of-the-land principle with another important protection. It provided No free man shall be seized or imprisoned or disseised or outlawed or exiled or injured in any way nor will we enter on him
