Did the Jennison Case Outlaw Slavery in Massachusetts

JN his Outline of History, H. G. Wells lists only two events between I780 and I787: the Treaty of Paris and a decision of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts declaring slavery unconstitutional in that state.' Within the past century historians and legal scholars have frequently discussed this decision and, although there are many discrepancies among these accounts, they all agree that the date of the case was either I78i or I783 and that the ruling of the Court rested on the first article of the Declaration of Rights in the Massachusetts Constitution of I780.2

Political science · American Constitutional Law and Politics · History