An extraordinarily rare original of Magna Carta has been discovered, hiding in plain sight in the archives of the Harvard Law School, where it was mislabeled as a mere copy of the document that served as a foundational text for the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution — and international human rights law today.
The remarkable find was made by a pair of Magna Carta sleuth-scholars from Britain. The document, on sheepskin parchment, was purchased by Harvard in the aftermath of World War II from a London bookdealer in 1946 for $27.50 — or about $462 in today’s dollars.
The last Magna Carta sold, by Ross Perot’s Perot Foundation, was purchased for $21.3 million in 2007 by businessman and Baltimore Orioles owner David Rubenstein and gifted to the National Archives in Washington.
Harvard has many assets to paid for their coming legal bills.
