1215 · Charters, declarations and treaties
Magna Carta
England
A charter agreed by King John and his barons, promising that the king himself must obey the law and that no free man should be punished without lawful judgment.
Why it matters
It became a symbol of the idea that rulers are under the law, and it was cited for centuries in England and in the American colonies.
Built on
No earlier text on this timeline is a documented model for it.
Went on to shape
Counting texts that borrowed from the texts that borrowed from this one, 57 later texts on this timeline trace back to it.
Countries in the Legal Families Atlas
TheLawToKnow Tools’s timeline lists links of influence only where the borrowing is widely documented. Historians sometimes disagree about how much one text shaped another. It is an educational overview, not legal advice.
