This June will you be wishing the Magna Carta a very happy birthday? An 800-year-old document might not necessarily warrant a lovely slice of cake, but I’m sure someone somewhere will be celebrating this anniversary. No doubt many readers will be wondering why I want to discuss the Magna Carta, but as I always do, I’ll ask for your patience and explain why I think it’s an important quality document.

The Magna Carta wasn’t born from the need to establish conformity to a required standard, as many documents are today. Its story, like any good tale from the Middle Ages, starts with a villainous character—in this case King John of England. King John longed for a war with neighbors across the English Channel that was going to be expensive, so he levied taxes on the impoverished inhabitants of his lands to pay for it. It became clear that some taxation balance was needed, so a few English noblemen, with support from the very powerful Church, set about creating a new set of rules to bring equality to society and remove some power from the king.

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