English Bill of Rights

Impact

The Bill of Rights has had a lasting impact on England's constitutional development and political history as well as on the formulation of comprehensive bills of rights in other countries. Much of its content was the product of its time, especially of the political upheaval and dramatic events of the Glorious Revolution. As a testament to the bill's definitive nature, however, it is still widely cited today, and it retains statutory force and is considered a pillar of the Revolution Settlement, encompassing a series of acts beginning with the Bill of Rights (1689) and ending with the Act of Settlement (1701), which secured a Protestant succession to the English throne.

The importance of the Bill of Rights as a focal point for individual rights and free and fair government reemerged in the late eighteenth century, when it was widely discussed during the American and French revolutions. The Revolution Society, founded to celebrate the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and chaired by Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl Stanhope, reprinted the Bill of Rights in its entirety to raise awareness of its constitutional importance and as an example of English liberties during the formulation of a new French Constitution in the early 1790s. However, interpretations of the process that led up to the bill's enactment have been continually debated. The conservative historian J. C. D. Clark has argued that the significance of the bill has been exaggerated and that it did little more than put rights and freedoms that had long existed into written form. Nonetheless, in its historical context the Bill of Rights represented a decisive step in favor of parliamentary sovereignty. The sections on cruel and unusual punishment and free and fair elections anticipate many of the key legal documents of the twentieth century.

In addition to its historical importance, the bill has had a huge political, philosophical, and linguistic influence worldwide by setting forth a precedent upon which framers of later constitutions and declarations have drawn. Most notably, the U.S. Bill of Rights and the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, while different in scope and tenor, are clearly indebted to the English Bill of Rights.