Trump v. Barbara · ¶427

The first was the problem of slavery and, more broadly, of race. In England itself, the number of slaves had never approached American dimensions. Just four years before the American Colonies declared independence, Lord Mansfield’s decision in Somerset v. Stewart, Lofft. 1, 98 Eng. Rep. 499 (K. B. 1772), denied that slavery had any common-law foundation. See id., at 19, 98 Eng. Rep., at 510 (proclaiming that slavery was “so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law”). And it would soon disappear. In the United States, on the other hand, nearly 700,000 lived in slavery—roughly one-fifth of the country’s population—according to the first census in 1790. And since the contemporary definition of a citizen was a “freeman of a city; . . . not a slave,” 1 S. Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (4th rev. ed. 1773), it was obvious that neither the Articles of…

slip opinion, revised 7/01/26
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