Maggie's Farm

At First Principles. Just one quote:

The British, seeking to adapt to the aspirations of a modern, democratizing age, weaned themselves from Magna Carta. The Americans, “born equal, instead of becoming so,” in Tocqueville’s phrase, found in Magna Carta a symbol of political liberty, silently ignoring its feudal excrescences and adopting the common law insofar as it was, in the later words of Joseph Story, “applicable to the situation of the colony, and . . . not . . . altered, repealed, or modified by any of our subsequent legislation.” The Americans eventually established many of the Charter’s provisions in written constitutions of their own.