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colleagues. I am at the very top of the government who faces real
life problems and decision makers today. So I hope I can do that.
With that caveat, I have also been asked to talk about the Magna
Carta which is reheard from Professor Harding at eight hundred
years old this year. So it is rather an old juxtaposition for someone
who ever sorted out practical real life problems by looking back
eight hundred years. I hope we will hear about today. I think we
can learn a lot nowadays by looking back on this occasion.

Just briefly on this Magna Carta. If, like me, your
knowledge about it is rather limited, before we start this year
celebration for the 800th anniversary, you may know a few things
about it. You probably know that it is eight hundred years old, not
least, because we have just been talking about it. The great charter
was sealed in 1215. You may also beware with, as we talk about,
the establishment of core principles, what these principles were
and have evolved over the time. We haven’t heard back to the
Magna Carta when we talk about the rule of law as an established
concept, the liberty of individual, no taxation without
representation and so forth.

Thirdly, you may be conscious of the change I think,
fundamentally, the relationship of the King and eventually the
government with his people. So, it started to change
fundamentally that relationship between the governor and
governed. Lord Denning, as we called Tom Bingham, and
Professor Dicey and I will give you another great prestige jurist,
Lord Denning, who describes it as the greatest constitutional
document of all times, a foundation of the freedom of individuals
against the arbitrary authority of dead spots. It’s also being
encapsulated as the foundation, perhaps, of our nation’s
parliamentary supremacy. And we’ve talked about how democracy
and the rule of law have emerged in different times. In UK, it’s
pretty much found in the notion of parliament and the same
supremacy in the UK.

The Magna Carta was also being relied on by those fighting
an absolute monarchy in England in the seventeenth century.
It was carried across the Atlantic by the pilgrims with the
foundation some say of the civil liberty set out of the constitution

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