TEXAS SUPREME COURT HISTORICAL SOCIETY

The Society’s Program “Magna Carta’s Eight Hundred Year Legacy”Filled the Conference Hall at the State Bar Annual MeetingBy David A. FurlowPoster featuring King Henry III’s 1225 version of Magna Carta in the National Archives in London.ON JUNE 15, 1215, KING JOHN I OF ENGLAND reluctantly agreed to make peace with a group ofrebellious barons. He did so by sealing (not signing) the Great Charter, Magna Carta. Magna Carta promisedto protect the prerogatives of the church, end arbitrary imprisonment of barons, guarantee swift and sure justice,and limit taxes payable to the king. “Here is a law which is above the King and which even he must not break,”Sir Winston Churchill wrote in 1956. “This reaffirmation of a supreme law and its expression in a general charteris the great work of Magna Carta; and this alone justifies the respect in which men have held it.”Eight hundred years later, on June 18, 2015, an audience of lawyers, judges, and State Bar employees braveda tropical storm’s torrential rains to see the Texas Supreme Court Historical Society’s program, Magna Carta:The Eight Hundred Year Legacy. After Memorial Day flooding in Houston inundated the home of our colleagueformer First Court of Appeals Justice Murry Cohen, First Court of Appeals Senior Justice Terry Jennings, City ofHouston Judge Charles “Kin” Spain, and I met in San Antonio to present a one-hour C.L.E. program.112