And the principal benefit of the charter was, that it contained a written description and acknowledgment, by the king himself, of what the constitutional law of the kingdom was, which his coronation oath bound him to observe.
Spooner highlights the importance of Magna Carta in formally defining the constitutional law that the king was obligated to uphold.
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A man has a natural right to enforce his own rights and redress his own wrongs.
The people considered their jurisprudence as a part of their inheritance.
And the right is practically established only when and because the government, no longer exists to call it in question.
Yet the codes of the most celebrated kings are very small, and were little more than compilations of immemorial customs.