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The abolition of slavery: why words don’t count

09 June 2023 / Malcolm Bishop KC
Issue: 8028 / Categories: Features , Equality , Human rights
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It’s not what was said but what others thought was said… Malcolm Bishop KC reflects on the abolition of slavery & the extraordinary legacy of Somerset

‘The air of England is too pure for a slave to breathe; let the black go free!’ These words of Lord Mansfield in the celebrated case of Somerset v Stuart have echoed down the ages as a landmark judgment in the history of the abolition of slavery. But there’s a slight difficulty. He never said it. In fact, it is not easy to discover what he did say, because in 1772 when the judgment was given the law reports had not yet attained the accuracy of later years. There was no court recordings and Mr Pitman’s shorthand had not yet been invented. Reporters took down what the judges said as best they could, as did newspapers who in those days would report in extenso the judgments of topical cases, and Mansfield’s famous words appear to have been taken from a

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NEWS
Artificial intelligence may be revolutionising the law, but its misuse could wreck cases and careers, warns Clare Arthurs of Penningtons Manches Cooper in this week's NLJ
Bea Rossetto of the National Pro Bono Centre makes the case for ‘General Practice Pro Bono’—using core legal skills to deliver life-changing support, without the need for niche expertise—in this week's NLJ
Small law firms want to embrace technology but feel lost in a maze of jargon, costs and compliance fears, writes Aisling O’Connell of the Solicitors Regulation Authority in this week's NLJ
Charles Pigott of Mills & Reeve reports on Haynes v Thomson, the first judicial application of the Supreme Court’s For Women Scotland ruling in a discrimination claim, in this week's NLJ
The Supreme Court issued a landmark judgment in July that overturned the convictions of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, once poster boys of the Libor and Euribor scandal. In NLJ this week, Neil Swift of Peters & Peters considers what the ruling means for financial law enforcement
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