I don't know and I've been wondering for a while. There's not much literature on this and the literature that suggests that Somerset was a major impetus for American Independence looks like it might be wishful thinking. The literature I trust is much less sweeping. [But one problem is that some of the standard works I have are, as usual, inaccessibly stowed away in boxes in our rental house basement...]
On the other hand, Somerset being a major impetus for American Independence would make a huge amount of sense for a whole slew of reasons. But I never seen the cased laid out via citation of soruces, just as a side remark here or there, or the citation of sources that don't seem central to any politically powerful movement (i.e. abolitionists do occasionally take this view when they criticize slave owners, but that's hardly evidence for what slave owners were actually up to).
As examples of credible sources that make suggestive side remarks, see for instance George van Cleve, Somerset's Case and Its Antecedents in Imperial Perspective, Law & History Rev 2006, writing in the conclusion (citations omitted):
Mansfield's comment in the judgment that slavery had originated not just in England but in every country solely from positive law was a deliberate effort to demolish legal justification for slavery on any other basis, in England as well as in the colonies. Mansfield's positive law holding meant that slavery existed only within those jurisdictions where positive law sanctioned it, and only to the extent it was sanctioned. The fact that slavery became entirely a creature of positive law also meant that it could be selectively altered or abolished in the colonies. By the late eighteenth century, the English Crown had limited legal authority to govern in the colonies without Parliament's acquiescence; therefore, Mansfield's creation of a positive law framework for slavery in the context of rising abolitionist sentiment laid the groundwork for Parliamentary control of colonial slavery. Perhaps equally important was that making slave property a creature of positive law raised substantial issues about whether compensation to slaveowners would be required if Parliament chose to alter or abolish slavery.
Mansfield's positive law holding also knowingly devalued slave property by making slave status wholly dependent on the law of individual jurisdictions, which he (and slaveowners) knew meant that slave flight would increase because fugitive slaves could become free or protected against excessive force and compelled return, not just in England but in the colonies.
Whether Lord Mansfield qualified his remarks on slavery's origin by referring to limits on the powers of "courts of justice" to sanction slavery or not, a larger point remains. Reached after extraordinarily comprehensive and highly visible public arguments from England's preeminent lawyers, Lord Mansfield's conclusion on the origin of slavery, even if qualified, was inevitably, as he well knew, profoundly destructive of the moral and legal legitimacy of slavery, since it made slave property an artificial creature of statute and deprived slavery of the sanction of the common law. The sanction of the common law was also the sanction of religion and morality because it was widely believed at the time that they were subsumed within the common law. Mansfield's argument in Harrison and the religious and political arguments of Somerset's counsel amply illustrate the power of the contemporary view that the common law must be consistent with morality and religious belief. The sweeping nature of Mansfield's statement on positive law intentionally undermined the moral and religious, and thus the political, legitimacy of colonial slavery.
Although Lord Mansfield's decision may have bought time for slaveowners, as intended it was "the handwriting on the wall" for them. That colonial slaveowners understood Mansfield's unwillingness to defend their position largely accounts for their concerted attacks on the judgment that began almost immediately after it was announced. Mansfield's public defection in Somerset meant that it was really only a question of time until public opinion deserted slaveowners as well. The first part of Davis's conclusion in his classic analysis, after reviewing English law, including Somerset, that "English courts endorsed no principles that undermined colonial slave law" was technically accurate, but only because Lord Mansfield deliberately created a means to distinguish between English and colonial law on slavery in his Somerset judgment.
Davis's further conclusion that colonial law and English law could "coexist and even interpenetrate within the larger imperial sphere" was mistaken formalism. During the eighteenth century, English common law and colonial law on chattel slavery were regarded by many, including prominent English judges such as Lord Chancellor Hardwicke and Mansfield, as potentially or actually interdependent and were unquestionably in substantive conflict. Mansfield sought to find a way to avoid explicitly addressing that conflict by creating a new legal framework for slavery, but did so quite knowingly at the price of undercutting the legal, economic, political, and moral basis of slavery as an institution throughout the Atlantic empire.
On perspective here is that the struggle against Somerset isn't only or even mainly about protecting slavery: Somerset also lays out that slave holding jurisdictions, in order to be allowed to have slaves, are not going to be equal members of the Empire and on equal footing with Britain itself until they give up slavery, which undercuts the integrating force colonial aspirations to full status in the Empire have for holding together the Empire. American Independence for slave owners is not yet mainly about protecting slavery but instead about constructing a political culture in which you can both be economically primarily a slave holder and a full member of the first ranks of political society. After 1772 it becomes clear that this isn't going to be possible in the British Empire and the American South decides it needs to seek it's own course?
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