Somerset v Stewart (1772) 98 ER 499 (also known as Sommersett v Steuart, Somersett's case, and the Mansfield Judgment) is a judgment of the English Court of King's Bench in 1772, relating to the right of an enslaved person on English soil not to be forcibly removed from the country and sent to Jamaica for sale. According to one reported version of the case, Lord Mansfield decided that:
Lord Mansfield found that to the extent that the laws of England and Wales had ever permitted slavery, those laws were superseded by later law or otherwise defunct. This absence of a current English statute ("positive law") under which the court might remand someone as a slave proved decisive, as Mansfield refused to accept any other basis for the court to order something that he considered repugnant. The case was closely followed throughout the Empire, particularly in the thirteen American colonies, although the ruling had no direct or immediate effect outside Britain. A similar Scottish case concluded in 1778. Scholars have disagreed over precisely what legal precedent the Somerset case set.
