Somerset Case: Lord Mansfield Rules Slavery Has No Basis in English Common Law

Lord Chief Justice Mansfield ruled that James Somerset, an enslaved man brought to England from Virginia by merchant Charles Stewart, could not be forcibly returned to slavery. Mansfield held that slavery was so 'odious' it could only be sustained by positive law — and no such law existed in England. The ruling freed Somerset and roughly 15,000 enslaved people in England. In the American colonies, slaveholders cited it as proof that British rule threatened their property in enslaved people — fue