Praxis II Citizenship

Answer: D - The U.S. constitutional right to due process of law can be traced back to England’s Magna Carta. The Magna Carta was one of the first written constitutions in the modern world. First issued in 1215, the original version only remained law for three months. Various re-drafts took effect over the next century, with the version issued in 1297 considered the most important in terms of present-day constitutional law (in the United Kingdom, the United States or anywhere else). Of the 37 articles in the 1297 Magna Carta, three are still unamended statutes in Britain; the right to due process of law is one of the articles that endures. Protections guaranteed through amendments to the Magna Carta likewise informed the original U.S. legal code, including habeas corpus. The charter’s influence on the U.S. Constitution is not remote-the U.S. Supreme Court has cited analysis of the text in its rulings. Most contemporary British historians refute the characterization that the Magna Carta was the birth of constitutional liberty, as it is occasionally portrayed to have been. However, it was the seminal event in the long history of citizens compelling their states to acknowledge and guarantee what we now consider basic human rights.