Zones of Law, Zones of Violence: The Legal Geography of the British Atlantic, circa 1772

Abstract

N June 22, 1772, before a packed courtroom in London's Westminster Hall, Lord Chief Justice Mansfield delivered his now-famous opinion that James Somerset, an enslaved man who had escaped after accompanying his master from Boston, could not be forcibly returned to Jamaica (as his master intended) and must be discharged. In finding for Somerset, Mansfield refused to rule on the underlying legality of owning slaves in England. Nonetheless, to justify such a significant alteration in status, Mansfield declared that slavery was odious and could only be supported by positive law, which England lacked.1 According to the Morning Chronicle, blacks who witnessed the proceedings from the gallery left shaking each other by the hand and congratulating themselves on the happy lot that permitted them to breathe the free air of England.2 Less ebullient, the West Indian planter Edward Long agreed that, whatever his stated purpose, Mansfield had made it legally impossible to reclaim a fugitive slave living in England.3 As Seymour Drescher has written, Somerset v. Stewart heralded a decisive shift in the metropolitan class struggle between mas-