Almost lost in the recent scuffle between the Trump Administration and Harvard University is the discovery there of a rare copy of the Magna Carta, the British document that laid the path for democracy and served as the harbinger of the American Constitution.
As if in a Raiders of the Lost Arc sequel, the document, said to be one of seven original versions, was found not in some remote castle or archaeological site but overlooked in the vast archives of the university’s law school library for the last eighty years. The document itself is believed to date from 1300 A.D.
Notified of the find, President Trump said, “Magna what? You mean magnum? Of champagne? That old? Must be worth a fortune!” The White House scrambled to locate an aide who knew Latin. Finding none, they looked for a history major. Jason Kurioso from the car pool read from his iPhone that “the Magna Carta — ‘Great Charter’ in Latin — stated no free man shall be sized or imprisoned, or stripped of rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.” The document was written and executed in England.
“Oh, it’s English then. It has no bearing here,” Mr. Trump concluded. “Tell Steve Miller we have nothing to worry about.”
The New York Times reported that Nicholas Vincent, a professor of medieval history at the University of East Anglia in England, helped authenticate the text. He noted that the document, which bound the nation’s rulers to acting within the law, had resurfaced at a time when Harvard and the Trump Administration have come to fisticuffs over the limits of presidential power.
“In this particular instance we are dealing with an institution that is under direct attack from the state itself, so it’s almost providential it has turned up where it has at this particular time.” He further noted that the document had become a symbol of the limits of power of rulers and kings. Elements of the Charter surface in the Bill of Rights and the constitutions of 17 American states.
Hearing this, Trump said, “What? Even kings have limits? And I wanted to be … well, dang! JD, tell the legal team to drop all that and start working on the Third Term project again.”
