As we celebrate Magna Carta on Law Day 2015, I have chosen to reflect on how the due process protections derived from “the Great Charter” may ultimately support marriage equality in the United States.1 When England’s most powerful feudal barons gathered in the fields of Runnymede, England in June 1215 to force King John to place his seal on a document that would limit his power over them, the barons planted seeds for an American constitutional democracy that would hold as “fundamental” many more rights than those demanded by this particular rebellious aristocratic group.2 It is widely known and accepted that Magna Carta, and all its incarnations, represent a milestone in history. For the first time, a monarch ceded his power to the written rule of law. Our American constitutional democracy is a direct descendent of the “rule of law” values embodied by Magna Carta. There were 63 clauses in the original Magna Carta, many only relevant to its time, but in this writer’s opinion, none more important and fruitful than Clause 39:
No free man shall be seized, or imprisoned or deprived or outlawed or exiled or in any way ruined, nor will we go or send against him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.
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