They approached the most powerful judge, Lord Mansfield, who was chief judge of the court of King's Bench, and they demanded that he issue a common law writ of habeus corpus on behalf of James Somerset.
Sie sprachen den mächtigsten Richter an, Lord Mansfield, den obersten Richter  der Kammer des Obersten Gerichtshofs, und verlangten von ihm eine Common-Law-Habeas-Corpus-Verfügung in James Somersets Namen.