All these things show how perfectly lawless and arbitrary the kings were, both before and after Magna Carta, and how necessary to liberty was the principle of Magna Carta and the common law, that no person appointed by the king should hold jury trials in criminal cases.
Spooner emphasizes the importance of the Magna Carta in protecting individual liberties against royal authority.
Share
More from Lysander Spooner
Proud from victory, and with their swords in their hands, would they surrender their liberties to a private man?
They cannot claim or expect that the whole people shall practise the folly of taking on trust their pretended superior knowledge, and of committing blindly into their hands all their own interests, liberties, and rights, to be disposed of…
But there is no reason why a judge should have the power of punishing, for contempt, any more than for any other offence.
Yet the codes of the most celebrated kings are very small, and were little more than compilations of immemorial customs.