The medieval English charter known as Magna Carta was intended as a local political document, created to make peace between England's King John and his barons in the early thirteenth century. However, it carried within it powerful ideas about the limits of government and the importance of individual liberty, and its influence has spread across the centuries and around the globe.
When President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law on July 2, 1964, he said that “the purpose of the law is simple. It does not restrict the freedom of any American, so long as he respects the rights of others.”
