Most of us are familiar with the Magna Carta as the first document to limit the authority of kings and declare the rule of law and the rights of the governed. But Peter Linebaugh, an historian at the University of Toledo, offers a more provocative view in an essay, “ The Secret History of the Magna Carta” ( Boston Review , Summer 2003). As originally declared in 1215, the Magna Carta may have validated “freedom under law,” as lawyers like to crow. But several mutations in the Magna Carta, later incorporated into the document we know today, recognize the rights of commoners.
