Somerset v Stewart

James Somerset, an enslaved African, was purchased by Charles Stewart (or Steuart), a customs officer when he was in Boston, Province of Massachusetts Bay, a British crown colony in North America.

After he was recaptured in November, Stewart had him imprisoned on the ship Ann and Mary (under Captain John Knowles), bound for the British colony of Jamaica.

Somerset's three godparents from his baptism as a Christian in England—John Marlow, Thomas Walkin and Elizabeth Cade—made an application on 3 December before the Court of King's Bench for a writ of habeas corpus.

The Chief Justice of the King's Bench, Lord Mansfield, ordered a hearing for 21 January; in the meantime he set the prisoner free on recognisance.

In the meantime, the case had attracted a great deal of attention in the press and members of the public donated money to support the lawyers for both sides of the argument.

Granville Sharp, an abolitionist layman who continually sought test cases against the legal justifications for slavery, was Somerset's real backer.

[11][12] After hearing oral arguments, Lord Mansfield proposed that Stewart could avoid the potentially far-reaching effects on slave-owners' profits if he were to allow Somerset to go free and not to insist on the court issuing a final judgment.

... Mr. Stewart advances no claim on contract; he rests his whole demand on a right to the negro as slave, and mentions the purpose of detainure to be the sending of him over to be sold in Jamaica.

Mr. Stewart may end the question, by discharging or giving freedom to the negro.Stewart opted to continue with the case, and Mansfield retired to make his decision, reserving judgment for over a month.

He gave his judgment on 22 June 1772 (this version, with modern paragraphing, is transcribed from a letter to the General Evening Post, reporting on the trial).

We pay due attention to the opinion of Sir Philip York and Mr. Talbot in the year 1729, by which they pledged themselves to the British planters for the legal consequences of bringing slaves into this kingdom, or their being baptized; which opinion was repeated and recognized by Lord Hardwicke, sitting as Chancellor on the 19th of October, 1749, to the following effect: he said, that trover would lay for a negro slave; that a notion prevailed, that if a slave came into England, or became a Christian, he thereby became emancipated; but there was no foundation in law for such a notion; that when he and Lord Talbot were Attorney and Solicitor General, this notion of a slave becoming free by being baptized prevailed so strongly, that the planters industriously prevented their becoming Christians; upon which their opinion was taken, and upon their best consideration they were both clearly of opinion, that a slave did not in the least alter his situation or state toward his master or owner, either by being christened, or coming to England; that though the statute of Charles II had abolished tenure so far, that no man could be a villein regerdane [sic; scribal error: read regardant], yet if he would acknowledge himself a villein engrossed in any Court of Record, he knew of no way by which he could be entitled to his freedom without the consent of his master.

Yet all of us are so clearly of one opinion upon the only question before us, that we think we ought to give judgment, without adjourning the matter to be argued before all the Judges, as usual in the Habeas Corpus, and as we at first intimated an intention of doing in this case.

The state of slavery is of such a nature, that it is incapable of now being introduced by Courts of Justice upon mere reasoning or inferences from any principles, natural or political; it must take its rise from positive law; the origin of it can in no country or age be traced back to any other source: immemorial usage preserves the memory of positive law long after all traces of the occasion; reason, authority, and time of its introduction are lost; and in a case so odious as the condition of slaves must be taken strictly, the power claimed by this return was never in use here; no master ever was allowed here to take a slave by force to be sold abroad because he had deserted from his service, or for any other reason whatever; we cannot say the cause set forth by this return is allowed or approved of by the laws of this kingdom, therefore the black must be discharged.Somerset was freed and his supporters, who included black and white Londoners, celebrated.

[citation needed] There were reactions from prominent individuals in Britain over the decision; Sharp rhetorically asked "why is it that the poor sooty African meets with so different a measure of justice in England and America, as to be adjudged free in the one, and in the other held in the most abject Slavery?

[19][20][21] Differences in reports of the judgment make it hard to determine how far Lord Mansfield went in acknowledging the principles behind his deliberately narrow ruling.

[22] In 1785, Lord Mansfield expressed the view in R v Inhabitants of Thames Ditton that his ruling in the Somerset case decided only that a slave could not be forcibly removed from England against his will.

In the official report of the case, Lord Mansfield is recorded as interrupting counsel to state "The determinations go no further than that the master cannot by force compel him to go out of the kingdom.

"[citation needed] The official report of Thames Ditton case supports the account of his judgment given in The Times letter and it is the strongest argument for a limited scope to the decision.

Lord Stowell further said: Thus fell a system which had existed in this country without doubt, and which had been occasionally forced upon its colonies and has continued to this day—that is, above fifty years—without further interruption.This wider reading of Somerset's case appears to be supported by the judgment of Mr. Justice Best in Forbes v Cochrane[26] in 1824.

[35] In 1788, anti-slavery campaigners, including Thomas Clarkson and James Ramsay, bought a slave in England to prove that slavery still existed in the country.

As Lord Mansfield said in the case report, "The setting 14,000 or 15,000 men at once free loose by a solemn opinion is much disagreeable in the effects it threatens".

When Mansfield died, his 1782 will granted his mulatto grand-niece, Dido Elizabeth Belle, her freedom, indicating that slavery continued to be legal.

It is an example in English law of the maxim he quoted as a warning to the parties in the case before he began his months of deliberation, "Let justice be done though the heavens fall".

[44] Lord Mansfield's ruling contributed to the concept that slavery was contrary "both to natural law and the principles of the English Constitution", a position adopted by abolitionists.

Activists speculated that the principles behind Lord Mansfield's decision might demand a rigorous definition of "conveniently", if a case were taken to its ultimate conclusion.

Such a judicial ruling never took place as the Thirteen Colonies gained independence by 1783 and established laws related to slavery, with the northern states abolishing it, several gradually.

As a result,[citation needed] some individuals in pro-slavery and anti-slavery colonies, for opposite reasons, desired a distinct break from English law in order to achieve their goals with regard to slavery.

[46] In the case of Quock Walker, Massachusetts' Chief Justice William Cushing gave instructions to the jury as follows, indicating the end of slavery in the state: As to the doctrine of slavery and the right of Christians to hold Africans in perpetual servitude, and sell and treat them as we do our horses and cattle, that (it is true) has been heretofore countenanced by the Province Laws formerly, but nowhere is it expressly enacted or established.