Lord Mansfield
historical figure · 7 works · 22 mentions · 29 anchored passages
Mansfield · William Murray · an English judge · lord Mansfield · the Chief-Justice
in the texts
Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion in England
Lord Mansfield, judge cited as an example of an enlightened reformer within the outwardly conservative Blackstonian generation.
Lord Mansfield was in his judicial character an enlightened reformer.
The elder Bentham recognised his son’s extraordinary gifts and set his heart on seeing him rise to the position of Mansfield or of Eldon.
The one was Lord Mansfield, the other Bentham.
The Unconstitutionality of Slavery
Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench who decided Somerset's case.
But Lord Mansfield said, in Somerset’s case, that slavery was “so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law.
It was decided by the Court of King’s Bench in England—Lord Mansfield being Chief Justice—before our revolution, and while the English Charters were the fundamental law of the colonies—that the principles of English liberty were so plainly incompatible with slavery, that even if a slaveholder, from another part of the world, brought his slave into England—though only for a temporary purpose, and w …
Lord Mansfield said, “So high an act of dominion must be recognized by the law of the country where it is used.
The Law of Torts
Judge whose formulation of the rule permitting recovery of property or its value from a deceased wrongdoer's estate is quoted.
As Lord Mansfield stated the rule, “where property is acquired which benefits the testator, there an action for the value of the property shall survive against the executor”.
Brown, where the drawer of a bill at Baltimore upon England was held discharged from his liability for the non-acceptance of the bill here by a certificate in bankruptcy, under the law of the United States of America, the Court of Queen’s Bench adopting the general rule laid down by Lord Mansfield in Ballantine v.
This kind of action was much fostered by Lord Mansfield, whose exposition confessed the fiction of the form while it justified the utility of the substance.
Construction Construed and Constitutions Vindicated
English judge who ruled in favor of Grenada against a crown-imposed revenue condition, cited as precedent for the illegitimacy of conditions attached to grants of self-government.
And an English judge, even lord Mansfield, no enthusiast for liberty, no enemy to the crown, decided in favour of the island, which retained its government, annulled the condition, and prospered far beyond its paler-livered comrades.
But, the decision of Lord Mansfield discloses a sufficient reason, why the framers of the constitution thought it unnecessary to subjoin to the trust, a prohibition upon congress to annex conditions.
An Essay on the Trial by Jury
Eighteenth-century judge cited on the antiquity of the court-leet.
* * Lord Mansfield states that this court was coeval with the establishment of the Saxons here, and its activity marked very visibly both among the Saxons and Danes.
They are not sworn to decide the law;
This doctrine is adopted by many among the most eminent judges, and the reasons for it are thus given by Lord Mansfield:
The Law of Intellectual Property
Presiding Justice of King's Bench in Millar vs. Taylor, who adopted the reasoning of Willes and Aston.
Three of the Justices, Willes, Aston, and Lord Mansfield, decided in favor of the right;
Lord Mansfield made no argument of his own, as to the resemblance, or difference, between mechanical inventions and literary compositions;
Lord Mansfield said, “I allow them sufficient to show ‘it is agreeable to the principle of right and wrong, the fitness of things, convenience, and policy, and therefore to the common law, to protect the copy [right] before publication.
The Genius of the Common Law
Eighteenth-century judge whose legal reforms were criticized by Junius in his own time but later universally approved.
Again, skipping some centuries, we may ask the judicious critic to note that no less a publicist than Junius denounced Lord Mansfield’s reforms, universally approved by later generations, as arbitrary corruptions of the law and encroachments on the liberties of Englishmen, substituting his own unsettled notions of equity for positive rules.
The second, which was reserved for Lord Mansfield, was that the Court should not treat the law merchant as an exotic law to be proved by evidence in every case, but should be bold to take judicial notice in the future of what had once come to its knowledge.