Newsmax.com Story
Reno Pays Homage to Rule of Law in English Meadow
By Richard Meares
RUNNYMEDE, England (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno joined some of America's top lawyers in a English watermeadow Saturday to commemorate the Magna Carta, the cornerstone of English, and later American, law.
The ceremony at Runnymede, on the River Thames west of London, was held by the American Bar Association (ABA) which has shifted its annual convention to Britain this year.
Some 3,000 U.S. lawyers are due to descend on London for the week-long convention, which opens Monday with an address by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose wife Cherie is a prominent lawyer.
U.S. Supreme Court judge Sandra Day O'Connor used Saturday's ceremony to rededicate the ABA's memorial to the Great Charter of English Liberties which rebellious barons forced King John to sign in 1215, establishing the rule of law.
``The story of English and American liberties began on this very meadow,'' O'Connor, who is the first woman judge in the U.S. Supreme Court, told an audience of some 300 lawyers and their families.
Reno was due to speak after the Runnymede ceremony, where speakers struggled to be heard above the roar of planes from nearby Heathrow airport and a nationalist heckler mounting a lone protest for a separate English parliament.
O'Connor quoted key passages from the Magna Carta, which have been enshrined in the U.S. constitution.
``No freemen shall be...imprisoned or (dispossessed)... except by the lawful judgement of his peers (and) by the law of the land,'' she said.
``The revolutionary idea embraced by this is what we now call the rule of law -- the idea that no person, even the sovereign, is above the law,'' she added.
Britain has no written constitution.
Some 10,000 lawyers came to the last ABA meeting in London in 1985 but high prices and heavier workloads kept numbers down this time. The ABA said it might lose up to $1 million hosting the event.
Subjects on the agenda this year range from regulating cyberspace and the death penalty to a more light-hearted study of the kind of divorce settlement Henry VIII's wives might have won today.
The week ends with the ABA president's drinks party in the once dreaded Tower of London where, despite the existence of the Magna Carta, all-powerful kings and queens still managed to behead those who displeased them for centuries to come.
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~USP
"[Even if there would be] few tears shed if and when the Second Amendment is held to guarantee nothing more than the state National Guard, this would simply show that the Founders were right when they feared that some future generation might wish to abandon liberties that they considered essential, and so sought to protect those liberties in a Bill of Rights. We may tolerate the abridgement of property rights and the elimination of a right to bear arms; but we should not pretend that these are not reductions of rights." -- Justice Scalia 1998
Reno Pays Homage to Rule of Law in English Meadow
By Richard Meares
RUNNYMEDE, England (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno joined some of America's top lawyers in a English watermeadow Saturday to commemorate the Magna Carta, the cornerstone of English, and later American, law.
The ceremony at Runnymede, on the River Thames west of London, was held by the American Bar Association (ABA) which has shifted its annual convention to Britain this year.
Some 3,000 U.S. lawyers are due to descend on London for the week-long convention, which opens Monday with an address by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose wife Cherie is a prominent lawyer.
U.S. Supreme Court judge Sandra Day O'Connor used Saturday's ceremony to rededicate the ABA's memorial to the Great Charter of English Liberties which rebellious barons forced King John to sign in 1215, establishing the rule of law.
``The story of English and American liberties began on this very meadow,'' O'Connor, who is the first woman judge in the U.S. Supreme Court, told an audience of some 300 lawyers and their families.
Reno was due to speak after the Runnymede ceremony, where speakers struggled to be heard above the roar of planes from nearby Heathrow airport and a nationalist heckler mounting a lone protest for a separate English parliament.
O'Connor quoted key passages from the Magna Carta, which have been enshrined in the U.S. constitution.
``No freemen shall be...imprisoned or (dispossessed)... except by the lawful judgement of his peers (and) by the law of the land,'' she said.
``The revolutionary idea embraced by this is what we now call the rule of law -- the idea that no person, even the sovereign, is above the law,'' she added.
Britain has no written constitution.
Some 10,000 lawyers came to the last ABA meeting in London in 1985 but high prices and heavier workloads kept numbers down this time. The ABA said it might lose up to $1 million hosting the event.
Subjects on the agenda this year range from regulating cyberspace and the death penalty to a more light-hearted study of the kind of divorce settlement Henry VIII's wives might have won today.
The week ends with the ABA president's drinks party in the once dreaded Tower of London where, despite the existence of the Magna Carta, all-powerful kings and queens still managed to behead those who displeased them for centuries to come.
------------------
~USP
"[Even if there would be] few tears shed if and when the Second Amendment is held to guarantee nothing more than the state National Guard, this would simply show that the Founders were right when they feared that some future generation might wish to abandon liberties that they considered essential, and so sought to protect those liberties in a Bill of Rights. We may tolerate the abridgement of property rights and the elimination of a right to bear arms; but we should not pretend that these are not reductions of rights." -- Justice Scalia 1998