The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and Commons for All

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University of California Press, 2009 - History - 352 pages
This remarkable book shines a fierce light on the current state of liberty and shows how longstanding restraints against tyranny—and the rights of habeas corpus, trial by jury, and due process of law, and the prohibition of torture—are being abridged. In providing a sweeping history of Magna Carta, the source of these protections since 1215, this powerful book demonstrates how these ancient rights are repeatedly laid aside when the greed of privatization, the lust for power, and the ambition of empire seize a state. Peter Linebaugh draws on primary sources to construct a wholly original history of the Great Charter and its scarcely-known companion, the Charter of the Forest, which was created at the same time to protect the subsistence rights of the poor.
 

Contents

Introduction
1
Two Charters
21
The Commodity and the Commons
46
The Constitution of the Commons
242
Glossary
301
Copyright

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