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.
Així que Lord Mansfield havia de prendre una decisió immediata, perquè si James Somerset  era una cosa legal, no era apte per a un  mandat d'habeas corpus, a no ser que fos una persona legal.