Well, Lord Mansfield had to make a decision right off the bat, because if James Somerset was a legal thing, he was not eligible for a writ of habeus corpus, only if he could be a legal person.
Lord Mansfield tuvo que tomar una decisión de buenas a primeras, porque si James Somerset era una cosa legal, no le era aplicable un recurso de habeas corpus, a menos que fuese persona jurídica.