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''Somerset v Stewart'' (1772) (98 ER 499 ) (aka ''Somersett's case'', or in State Trials v.XX ''Sommersett v Steuart'') is a famous judgment of the English Court of King's Bench in 1772, which held that chattel slavery was unsupported by the common law in England and Wales, although the position elsewhere in the British Empire was left ambiguous. Lord Mansfield decided that: Slavery had never been authorised by statute in England and Wales, and Lord Mansfield's decision found it also unsupported in common law. Lord Mansfield narrowly limited his judgment to the issue of whether a person, regardless of being a slave, could be removed from England against his will, and said he could not. Even this reading meant that certain property rights in chattel slaves were unsupported by common law. It is one of the most significant milestones in the abolitionist campaign. Some historians believe the case contributed to increasing colonial support for separatism in the Thirteen Colonies, by parties on both sides of the slavery question who wanted to establish independent government and law.〔 The southern colonies wanted to protect slavery and expanded its territory dramatically in the decades after independence was won.〔 ==Facts== 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.〔Receiver-General for the Eastern Middle District of British North America; born in the Orkney Islands in 1725, he had emigrated to Virginia in 1741. His name is spelt in various ways, as was then common.〕 Stewart brought Somerset with him when he returned to England in 1769 but in 1771 Somerset escaped. 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. He directed that Somerset be sold to a plantation for labour. 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''. Captain Knowles on 9 December produced Somerset before the Court of King's Bench, which had to determine whether his imprisonment was lawful. The Chief Justice of the King's Bench, William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, ordered a hearing for 21 January; in the meantime he set the prisoner free on recognisance. A request to prepare arguments was granted Somerset's counsel and so it was not until 7 February 1772 that the case was heard. In the meantime, the case had attracted a great deal of attention in the press and members of the public donated monies 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. When the case was heard, five advocates appeared for Somerset, speaking at three hearings between February and May. These lawyers included Francis Hargrave, a young lawyer who made his reputation with this, his first case; James Mansfield, Serjeant-at-law William Davy, Serjeant-at-law John Glynn and the noted Irish lawyer and orator John Philpot Curran whose lines in defence of Somerset were often quoted by American abolitionists (such as Frederick Douglass). Somerset's advocates argued that while colonial laws might permit slavery, neither the common law of England nor any law made by Parliament recognised the existence of slavery and slavery was therefore unlawful.〔Trade in serfs had been condemned by the Council of London in 1102〕 The advocates also argued that English contract law did not allow for any person to enslave himself, nor could any contract be binding without the person's consent. The arguments focused on legal details rather than humanitarian principles. When the two lawyers for Charles Stewart put their case, they argued that property was paramount and that it would be dangerous to free all the black people in England, who numbered at the time approximately 15,000. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Somerset v Stewart」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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