The way people thought about the Magna Carta when it was first written is way different than the way they think about it today.

Back in 1215 the Magna Carta was a very literal list of problems people had been having and possible solutions for those problems. Each clause meant something personal to someone. These were people who had had their possessions, or castles taken away by the king without a trial. Or the forests had suddenly become the king's personal playgrounds. Or they'd had a parent die and, instead of inheriting a title and land, they'd been harshly taxed, denied their inheritance, thrown out of their home, and forced into a shotgun marriage with some stranger.

These were real issues and these people wanted these actual laws on the books. The Magna Carta is a grim snapshot of just how mean people could be to each other before there was a developed legal system.

To modern-day people who don't have castles to steal or titles to inherit, the laws created in the Magna Carta aren't very applicable to daily life. Chances are you aren't too concerned about a government official strolling past your house one day, taking all your firewood, and then making a getaway on your horse.

Today the Magna Carta is seen as an inspirational document rather than a literal list of laws that we all ought to be following. It's proof that the constitution that we follow and the rights that we value developed over time. The American founding fathers weren't visited by ghosts one night and handed the Bill of Rights verbatim on a glowing supernatural tablet. Ideas for how to successfully limit the power of government came about in a slow process…that may have started with the Magna Carta.

No one today uses Magna Carta clauses word-for-word from the original in actual laws. Governments pick and choose the ideas that still make sense (like punishments fitting the crime) and rewrite them. The Magna Carta is looked at as a nice starting point, like: "Isn't it cute how all those barons tried to create jury duty so long ago? Now let's figure out a way to make that idea actually work."