By Joseph Pisani

For 80 years, Harvard Law School believed the Magna Carta it bought for $27.50 was a reproduction.

Now, British researchers think the document is a genuine version -- one of a few still in existence.

The Magna Carta was originally written in 1215 and agreed on by King John of England. It was periodically reissued by monarchs over the next century. The one that Harvard has appears to date to 1300, during the reign of Edward I.

A seminal document in legal history, the Magna Carta asserts that the king is subject to the law, and recognizes limits in his power. It has influenced constitutions globally, including the U.S.'s founding documents.

News of the discovery comes at a peculiar time in Harvard's history, as the university battles with Washington over antisemitism concerns. The Trump administration has pulled billions in federal funding and threatens to yank more. It has demanded oversight of Harvard's admissions, hiring and governance. The university is suing the government, arguing that it has violated its constitutional rights.

The document, which spent decades in a vault, is now being secured in an undisclosed location, said Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard Law School professor and chair of its library. He declined to say how much the school believes the document is now worth.

The school is still determining if it will put the newly verified document on display, but Zittrain said the artifact "offers a special and profound reminder of the ways in which the rule of law, and the societies and people it serves, has, in fits and starts, grown and strengthened."

The journey of Harvard's Magna Carta from reproduction to real deal started with some internet sleuthing in late 2023.

David Carpenter, a medieval history professor at King's College, was in his study in London doing what "may sound like dry as dust" research about Magna Carta copies for a coming book.

The picture on Harvard Law School's website caught his eye. It had a capital 'E' at the start, and the name 'Edwardus' in the first line and was dated 1300, when King Edward I was in power.

"They seemed to have no awareness of what they had," Carpenter said. With the school's version, there are 25 known Magna Cartas, with most of them in the U.K., he said.

Carpenter said he emailed a picture to another expert, Nicholas Vincent, a medieval history professor at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England.

"I was arguing with Belgian librarians about whether I could see something really rather dull when this thing arrived," he said.

His mood changed when he saw it. "There was just no question," Vincent said.

"You know damn well what that is," he said he wrote back to Carpenter.

Vincent alerted Harvard right away by email, and the men continued to build their case while they waited. They kept their work quiet from other academics, but told their families. "My wife is very uninterested in such things, fortunately," Vincent said.

In the spring of 2024, Harvard agreed to do special imaging of the document to verify if it was real, Carpenter said. Harvard has also had its experts look over Vincent and Carpenter's work, Zittrain said.

The school had never questioned the document's origins because it was told it was a copy when it purchased it, Zittrain said.

The last time a Magna Carta was publicly sold was in 2007. David Rubenstein, a co-founder of the private-equity firm Carlyle Group, paid $21.3 million at an auction for the 1297 version previously owned by Texas billionaire and two-time presidential candidate Ross Perot. Perot had bought it for $1.5 million two decades earlier. It is now on display at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., courtesy of Rubenstein.

Carpenter said it was a coincidence that the announcement of the finding comes when the school is in a power struggle with President Trump.

"It's very timely," Carpenter said. "But this is no prank, nor stunt."

Write to Joseph Pisani at joseph.pisani@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 15, 2025 00:01 ET (04:01 GMT)

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