The Somerset Case and the Abolition of Slavery in England

Abstract

omerset v. Stewart, decided by Lord Chief Justice Mansfield four years before the American Declaration of Independence, was long S interpreted as outlawing slavery in England.’ Not only did Somerset have a profound impact in Britain where, many believe, it led to the subsequent abolition of the slave trade (1807) and the eventual emancipation of all slaves in the British colonies (1834), but it also ‘became part of a newly developing American common law [and] . . . was widely discussed in America both before and after the revolution’.2 The American courts, following the revolution, adopted the great bulk of English common law and most interpreted Somerset to stand for the proposition that, in the absence of specific legislation or constitutional provisions authorizing it, slavery was contrary to natural law, ‘odious’ and thus prohibited under common law tradition. Consequently, northern courts, particularly, interpreted the 1772 English decision as outlawing slavery in the absence of any specific legislative mandate to the contrary. If, as some now suggest, Somerset did not abolish slavery, then American courts erroneously incorporated it into common law following the revolution. If the common law at the time of the American revolution sanctioned slavery, then the courts in Massachusetts and other northern states should have held that slavery was permitted in their states unless specifically outlawed by state