It Is Wrong to Impose Pain before Proving Blame

摘要

Although its rights were applicable only to an elite in 1215, Magna Carta planted the seed for an elementally important precept of English law. The precept is that it is wrong to expose someone to a punishment or legal pain unless they have broken the law. Clause 39 says: No freeman shall be arrested or imprisoned or deprived of his freehold or outlawed or banished or in any way ruined, nor will we take or order action against him, except by the lawful judgment of his equals and according to the law of the land.