The irony of the moment could not have been lost on members of Congress. Both chambers of lawmakers convened in a historic, joint session and heard an English king, on April 28, on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, invoke the majesty of Magna Carta as a stern and much-needed reminder for the nation’s legislators that, in the long sweep of Anglo-American legal history, executive power has been subject to checks and balances, ever since King John, in 1215, accepted the demands of the barons at Runnymede. For many, there is fear that the 800-year-old Magna Carta, justly viewed as the “Tree of Liberty” for Anglo-American rights and freedoms, a bulwark against executive tyranny, and what Sir Edward Coke described as “such a Fellow that he has no Sovereign,” has disappeared into the mists of time. King Charles III, the second British monarch to address Congress, was seemingly reassuring Americans that that need not be the fate of checks and balances as a constitutional restraint on presidential power.