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.
A quel punto, Lord Mansfield deve decidere in un batter d'occhio, perché se James Somerset era un bene, non era idoneo all'habeas corpus: solo una persona giuridica può esserlo.