I haven’t checked for new bills in a few hours, so maybe it has been introduced, but someone who wants to return Indiana to the good old days, could model their legislation after New Hampshire’s HB 1580-2012
[All] bills and resolutions addressing individual rights or liberties shall include a direct quote from the Magna Carta which sets forth the article from which the individual right or liberty is derived.
A widow could have the right to remain in their husbands’ house for forty days after his death and even to remarry if she got permission of a lord whose lands she held.
At her husband’s death, a widow may have her marriage portion and inheritance at once and without trouble. She shall pay nothing for her dower, marriage portion, or any inheritance that she and her husband held jointly on the day of his death. She may remain in her husband’s house for forty days after his death, and within this period her dower shall be assigned to her. No widow shall be compelled to marry, so long as she wishes to remain without a husband. But she must give security that she will not marry without royal consent, if she holds her lands of the Crown, or without the consent of whatever other lord she may hold them of.
Underage heirs could have the right to interest-free loans from Jews.
If anyone who has borrowed a sum of money from Jews dies before the debt has been repaid, his heir shall pay no interest on the debt for so long as he remains under age, irrespective of whom he holds his lands.
The right to standard measures for wine, ale, corn, dyed cloth, russett, and haberject. (But, only if those measurements are made in the London quarter or ells within the selvedges.)
There shall be standard measures of wine, ale, and corn (the London quarter), throughout the kingdom. There shall also be a standard width of dyed cloth, russett, and haberject, namely two ells within the selvedges. Weights are to be standardised similarly.
The right to be free of arrest or imprisonment on murder charges founded on a complaint by a woman that you killed someone other than her husband.
No one shall be arrested or imprisoned on the appeal of a woman for the death of any person except her husband.
We commonly credit the Magna Carta as a foundational source of rights; but mainly because it was the legal documentary beginning of the notion that the King couldn’t arbitrarily exercise his will. The notion that the scope of liberties end with that document is anachronistic and borders on the despotic.
You say “despotic”, I say “dumb as a bag of hammers”.
And speaking for myself (but noting that I’m the immediate past president of the Indianapolis Jewish Community Relations Council), I can see a few problems with some of those provisions being used as the basis for laws today.
Where, oh where, is our putative King Louis that we could use to threaten the Legislature to expand and codify our Hoosier rights? It worked for the English Barons against King John!
Besides, the Magna Carta is foreign law…..well, it certainly doesn’t SOUND American……is the Vatican behind all of this?
I guess once the press started asking around a number of the legislators who support the bill admitted they never actually read th Magna Carta.
Makeno mistake, these people are avowed tea partiers and this is what happens when you let them into power.
And this is what happens when I type on an iPad. Awful!
This is why legislators should consult me before they do anything. There are 19 or 20 good rights or principles to be found (I found them, anyway) in the original Magna Charta, but the landmines in the parts about Jewish people and women could easily have been avoided by attentive legislators. Those rules are unconstitutional, now, as they should be, because they are unjust. Also, I wonder whose idea it was that every appropriate proposal concerning rights or liberties must necessarily relate back to Magna Charta. The danger in this bill probably concerns more what is not in the Great Charter than what is.
Also, New Hampshire’s constitution includes the typical rules allowing each house to make its own rules, so I do not know why there would be a proposal to make a law to determine them.
I would not hang this around the collective neck of the Tea Parties, though.