Perhaps the most famous clause (number 39 in the 1215 charter, clause 29 in the 1297 statute) of Magna Carta states: No Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the Land.
[1] Over 500 years later, following the American Revolution, legislators looked to Magna Carta for inspiration, and emulated its "law of the land" language.
In 1550, it was said by John Pollard, who was a serjeant-at-law and later Speaker of the House of Commons, that beating and wounding a man is generally "against the law of the land" (subject to exceptions).
[22][23] English jurists, writing of legem terrae in reference to Magna Carta, stated that this term embraces all laws that are in force for the time being within a jurisdiction.
"[36] However, in 1884, the U.S. Supreme Court called this a misunderstanding, saying Coke never meant that indictment by a grand jury is "essential to the idea of due process of law in the prosecution and punishment of crimes, but was only mentioned as an example and illustration of due process of law as it actually existed in cases in which it was customarily used.
[37] However, by allowing an alternative to grand jury review in the Hurtado case, the Court permitted a procedural reform that departed from the common law.
[37] In 17th century England, Lord Coke wrote that if common law "be not abrogated or altered by parliament, it remains still...."[26][38] He also said that the power and jurisdiction of parliament is, "so transcendent and absolute as it cannot be confined either for causes or persons within any bounds,"[39][40] and that not even Magna Carta would prevent subsequent statutes contrary to that great charter.
[41][42] In the eighteenth-century, the English jurist William Blackstone likewise wrote that the law of the land "depends not upon the arbitrary will of any judge; but is permanent, fixed, and unchangeable, unless by authority of parliament.... Not only the substantial part, or judicial decisions, of the law, but also the formal part, or method of proceeding, cannot be altered but by parliament.