Most scholars consider the Magna Charta (Latin for “Great Charter”), signed in England in 1215, to be the forerunner of the legal guarantees which exist today. King John of England, under heavy pressure from rebellious nobles, granted all English freemen certain rights “to be had and holden by them and their heirs…for ever.” At that time in history very few people in England were actually regarded as freemen, but it was a step in the right direction. Before the Magna Charta, any provisions for human rights were at the behest of the occasional benign ruler of the land.
More often than not rulers were prone to oppress their peoples using arbitrary authority that was only challenged when others wanted to seize the same powers for themselves. Efforts by peasants to win more economic freedom were ruthlessly suppressed. To this day in many lands, persons openly critical of government policy find themselves jailed or executed.
