Definition
Great Charter is the English translation of Magna Carta, the foundational constitutional document sealed by King John of England in 1215. In legal usage, the term refers to the original charter and its subsequent reissues (notably 1216, 1217, and the definitive 1225 version), by which the English Crown acknowledged limits on royal authority and affirmed certain rights and liberties of subjects.
The term appears in older English and American legal writing as a direct synonym for Magna Carta. It carries the same weight and meaning: a charter extracted from the Crown under pressure from the barons, later confirmed by successive monarchs, and eventually enrolled as a foundational statute of English law. By the seventeenth century, Magna Carta had been reinterpreted by common lawyers — most prominently Edward Coke — as a guarantee of individual liberties, including the right against arbitrary imprisonment expressed in Chapter 39 (later Chapter 29 of the 1225 reissue). That chapter is the historical root of habeas corpus, due process, and the principle that no person may be imprisoned except by lawful judgment of peers or the law of the land.
In American legal discourse, the Great Charter is invoked primarily in constitutional argument and historical commentary. It is not operative domestic law in the United States, but it is treated as a foundational source for liberties later constitutionalized in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.
---
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Magna Carta.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's 1913 treats "Magna Charta" as the primary entry and describes it as the great charter of English liberties granted by King John in 1215, later confirmed by Parliament, and regarded as the foundation of English constitutional freedom.
The gap here is one of register and specificity, not meaning. In ordinary speech, "Great Charter" and "Magna Carta" are interchangeable, and both terms are understood loosely as symbols of individual liberty. In legal research, precision matters: the charter was reissued multiple times, and the legally operative version in English statutory history is the 1225 reissue confirmed by Parliament, not the 1215 original. Researchers invoking "the Great Charter" in constitutional argument need to be attentive to which version a source is referencing.
---
Common Confusion
Great Charter is sometimes conflated with the Charter of the Forest (Carta de Foresta), a companion document also issued in 1217, which addressed rights of common people in royal forests. The two documents traveled together through much of medieval confirmation history, but they are distinct instruments. Early legal writers occasionally use "the charters" in the plural to mean both documents together. A source that references "the charters" without specifying may be addressing one or both.
The term should also be distinguished from "charter" used in its broader legal sense — a grant, franchise, or incorporating instrument — which has no necessary connection to Magna Carta.
---
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter "Great Charter" most frequently in three contexts: early English common law materials, seventeenth-century constitutional argument, and American founding-era writing.
In historical English sources, the term is used interchangeably with "Magna Charta" (note the archaic spelling). Black's and Rapalje & Lawrence both cross-reference rather than define, treating Great Charter as a pointer to Magna Carta entries. Bouvier does the same. This means the substantive historical dictionary content lives under MAGNA CARTA or MAGNA CHARTA, not under this headword. Researchers using older digests should search both headwords.
The most significant research trap in this area is version conflation. The 1215 charter was annulled by Pope Innocent III within weeks of its sealing. The legally operative versions are the reissues, particularly 1225, which was formally confirmed by Parliament under Henry III in exchange for a tax grant. When constitutional historians and lawyers cite Magna Carta as statute, they are citing the 1225 version. When courts or treatise writers reference Chapter 29 (the due process and liberty of person provision), they are citing the 1225 chapter numbering, not the 1215 numbering (which is Chapter 39). This distinction matters when tracing citations through Coke's Institutes or Blackstone's Commentaries.
In the American context, the Great Charter functions as persuasive historical authority, not binding law. Its influence runs through the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause and, by incorporation, through the Fourteenth. The connection to habeas corpus — the writ Blackstone called "the great writ of liberty" — is the most direct doctrinal line. Researchers tracing the suspension clause or the scope of habeas in military and wartime contexts will encounter Great Charter arguments in the primary sources.
The Law Mind corpus connection between this term and habeas corpus doctrine is direct and substantive.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
All three historical dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus treat Great Charter as a cross-reference term rather than a substantive definition. Black's defines it as a pointer to "Magna Charta." Rapalje & Lawrence does the same, and notably clusters the headword with entries for "Great-Grandchildren" and "Great Oaks" — a purely alphabetical arrangement that illustrates how historical digests handled the term: as a label requiring redirection rather than independent treatment. Bouvier redirects to "MAGNA" without elaboration.
This unanimous cross-reference treatment across all three sources is itself instructive. It tells the researcher that no independent legal doctrine attached to the phrase "Great Charter" distinct from Magna Carta doctrine. The term was translational, not technical. The legal substance — the liberties protected, the constitutional arguments derived from the document — was always analyzed under the Latin name.
What the historical dictionaries do not provide is any account of the interpretive history: Coke's famous reinterpretation of Magna Carta in the seventeenth century as a common law constitution, Blackstone's treatment in the Commentaries, or the American reception. Researchers cannot rely on these dictionary entries for that history and should move directly to Coke's Second Institute or Blackstone's Commentaries, Book 1.
---
Jurisdictional Note
In England and Wales, Magna Carta chapters remain on the statute book in reduced form; most chapters were repealed over centuries, but the liberty of the subject provision (Chapter 29 of the 1225 version) retains symbolic and interpretive weight. In the United States, no version of Magna Carta is domestic law, but its principles are regarded as part of the common law inheritance that informed constitutional drafting and are regularly cited in constitutional litigation.
---
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Habeas Corpus — The Great Writ and Suspension Clause (The Law Mind Constitutional Law Encyclopedia)
---