Lord Mansfield: Justice in the Age of Reason

Lord Mansfield: Justice in the Age of Reason Norman 5 Poser McGill-Queen's University Press (2013); 432 pages (hardback); £27.99; ISBN-10: 0773541837; ISBN-13: 978-0773541832Professor Norman Poser's biography of England's greatest judge and longest-serving politician to have hailed from Scotland cannot be recommended highly enough.The first section of the book covers Lord Mansfield's early life as a pupil at Westminster School and an undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford. He studied hard and learned to network compulsively to overcome the prejudice he experienced as a Scot with aristocratic lineage but without wealth. Poser describes Lord Mansfield's career rise from his days at the bar living off food parcels from relatives to his appointment as Solicitor General, Attorney-General and Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench. Critically, the author then sets that rise against the backdrop of the constitutional and political currents of the early 18th century, which were to have an impact on Lord Mansfield's judicial and political philosophy.Poser identifies that prime among those influences, which he references adeptly throughout his book, was Jacobitism. That was the campaign to restore to the throne of Great Britain the descendants of the Catholic James II (Latin, Jacobus) who was ousted by the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and replaced by the Protestant William of Orange and Queen Mary. It attracted a great deal of support, especially among the Tory opponents to the various Whig administrations of the time. Although not Catholics, many Scots Protestants supported it, hoping that the restoration of the Stuart line would mean the end of the Act of Union between England and Scotland.To his later chagrin, Lord Mansfield's family could hardly have been more supportive of James's son, James Edward Stuart (the Pretender), and of his grandson Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie). Lord Mansfield's father stopped just short of joining the 1715 rebellion; his brother joined the rebellion and then became an adviser to the Pretender in Paris and his mother billeted Bonnie Prince Charlie in Perth during the 1745 Jacobite rebellion. Mansfield had, in 1725, sent a letter of support to the Pretender and spent the rest of his life hoping that it would never come to light, all the more so when he advised various ministries and became effectively the consigliere to George III.To counter that concern, Mansfield led the 1747 prosecution of Lord Lovat, one of the supporters of Bonnie Prince Charlie, at his trial for treason before the House of Lords. He also advised the government to prosecute the ringleaders of the rebellion, including Flora McDonald, who was instrumental in Bonnie Prince Charlie's flight when the rebellion failed. On Poser's fullyjustified theory, that sense of concern was also the reason why Lord Mansfield ruled in favour of virtually any government attempt to preserve its privileges and power in the law courts and supported that line in debates in Parliament, especially in the face of the American Revolution.Other early influences that Poser covers include the massive 18th century increase in trade for Great Britain, which inspired Lord Mansfield to uphold commercial interests as much as he could as a judge. He maintained the common law rule that any attempt by workers to combine in order to force improvements in their conditions on employers was conspiracy. In another case the question before the Court of Kang's Bench was whether the stench of a laboratory in London, which burnt bones to extract ammonia for sulphuric acid, was a nuisance to the neighbours. Lord Mansfield instructed the jury that the processes in the factory did not constitute a nuisance. He explained that the production of home-grown sulphuric acid would obviate the need to import it and overrode the inconvenience. …

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