Signed by King John on the banks of the River Thames on June 15, 1215, the Magna Carta is an iconic and much mythologized document that sets out the terms of a new constitutional arrangement between the Crown and the country’s most powerful nobles. Over the centuries, the Magna Carta has come to be regarded as a charter of individual liberty and a bulwark against despotism. Recent scholarship has explored the document’s relationship to canon law, Roman law, and customary practice, as well as to the Charter of the Forest that was produced in the same era. This symposium will draw on this scholarship in an effort to recover the Magna Carta “in its fullness,” as the historian Peter Linebaugh has written. The aim of the symposium is to situate the Magna Carta as a political document with powerful implications for concepts of citizenship, kingship, property, state-church relations, and the sources of legitimate authority.

Contributions from across the social sciences and humanities will be welcomed, with a special emphasis on political theory, medieval history, and legal studies. Completed papers should be roughly 12–15 pages in length.

The deadline for submission of papers is April 15, 2009. The provisional deadline for completed papers is September 15, 2009, for publication in spring 2010.

Proposals and inquiries should be sent to Professor Kent Worcester, Department of Political Science, Marymount Manhattan College, 221 East 71 Street, NY, NY 10021 USA (kworcester@mmm.edu).