The Trial Of King And The Transition Of Constitution

The trial of Charles I during the English Revolution profoundly changed the British history or even the World history. However, the trial has long been controversial for the title of political trials which making people neglect its profound constitutional significance.The notoriety of political trials is caused by several factors while the vague definition of political trials must be an overwhelming cause. Political trials in essence are neutral which means judicial trials involved political agenda paramountly. The concept of political trials, nevertheless, is misread in a long term because the concept also incorporates the concept of partisan trials which means the trials only have political agenda and controlled by political power, which resulting in the negative judgment.The trial of Charles I was not a partisan trial. It belongs to the trial of regime subordinated to the concept of political trials imply a trial for the leaders of former regime by the latter regime. But even the neutral meaning of political trial, is unwelcomed in the ideology of legalism. The ideology considers that law itself has its own value so that it is supposed law should keep away from political affairs. The dilemma is that there is not a clear boundary between law and politics. Beside, rule of law should become a tool for freedom instead of becoming a value itself. As a result, when it comes to evaluate the political trials we need to use the theory of Shklar’s legalism, which is using whether it can improvement of freedom or not as the standard for justification. Based on the standard is crucial to the evaluation of the trial of Charles I.English Revolution is essentially a liberal revolution about the opposition to the absolute monarchy. After the first civil war, the parliamentarian had tried to reach an agreement with Charles I upon several negotiations. However, the attempt to reach an agreement is finally bankrupted because of treachery of Charles I and the parliament’s factional struggle.The British consensus from court to commonalty, under the influence of Old Testament, asked the king should take the responsibilities for civil law for eliminating the guilty of blood on the land after outbreak of the second civil war. And yet, King’s intransigent attitude and the Presbyterians’ continuous compromises to the king resulting from the interest of factions led into the pride’s purge in the end. So in hereafter the new modal army and the independents decided to bring the king to trial in a short time.If the trial of Charles I is basically a partisan trial, there will be a powerful factious group in House of Commons to manipulating during the trial. The regicides, however, who shared diversity of political views, were actually quite unconsolidated so that the House of Commons was not only in fact prudently established the high court of justice as the body to judge Charles I but also the trial itself was consisting with the principle of substantial justice.The controversy of the trial is that whether the high court of justice has the jurisdiction for king in legitimacy or not. In a long time, the debate about this issue intended to ignore that the Rump was a “de facto” sovereignty via the civil war. The sovereignty of England had transferred before the trial. The House of Commons actually reserved the revolutionary accomplishments by making a precedent of the trial of king.For the dilemma that the jurisdiction of high court of justice lack of supporting in substantial law, the Lord President and the counsel solved it by two tricks. Firstly, ancient constitutional law——the nominal higher preexisting law——is appealed as the source of law to judging king. Secondly, the court considered Charles I as a chief magistracy instead of an anointed king therefore denied his sovereign immunity. The judge also showed the republicanism of English Revolution in the sermon before the judgment.There are immediate effect and far-reaching influence for transition of the English constitution upon the trial of Charles I. For immediate effect, it was virtually the sovereign declaration from the parliament who proclaimed the new government farewell to the Stuart regime in the political situation at that time. Besides, the desire of revenge for the old regime was restricted with the trial is that contributed to reconstruction of social order. For far-reaching influence, the trial in fact was a container of revolutionary accomplishments from English Revolution thus the Parliament’s jurisdiction can judge the tyrant is acknowledged by the judicial precedent that made England further promoting the transition to rechtsstaat.Nevertheless, the way to rechtsstaat is not as easy as pie be arrived just by trial of king. The trial of Louis XVI during the period of French Revolution was a parliamentary trial rather than judicial trial conventionally. The trial was descended to a battlefield of factional struggle to the extent that the trial was full of ideological arguments because of it rejected to apply the rigid judicial proceedings is not only do nothing beneficial to the transition but also made a precedent that destroy the enemies’ body based on deviate from the revolutionary principle which caused French Revolution rushing into La Terreur in the end.The comparison between the two trials of the king comes to a conclusion that the greatest contribution of the English model was avoid the Gordian knot of quasi-sovereignty that will bring the country back to the revolution by resorting to the bureaucratization of the judiciary during the transition period from revolution to routine administration.