The Bill of Rights of 1689 is an English law that established the principle of parliamentary supremacy over the crown, limiting royal power and setting out certain rights of Parliament and of individuals. It followed the Glorious Revolution and the accession of William and Mary to the English throne.
Facts
Key ProvisionEnacted by Parliament in 1689 after the Glorious Revolution, it declared illegal the suspension of laws and the raising of a standing army by the crown without parliamentary consent, affirmed the right to free parliamentary elections and free speech in parliamentary debate, prohibited excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishment, and settled the royal succession on William and Mary, establishing Parliament's supremacy over the monarch as a matter of law. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Both are part of the same seventeenth-century sequence of English statutes constraining arbitrary crown power that later shaped Anglo-American constitutionalism.
Several of its guarantees, against excessive bail and cruel punishment among them, prefigure protections the American Bill of Rights later enumerated.
Influenced
The 1689 settlement following the Glorious Revolution fixed the terms of English constitutional monarchy, subordinating the crown to Parliament.
Influenced By
The new monarchs William and Mary accepted the Bill of Rights as a condition of the 1689 settlement.
Shaped
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