Slavery and the Judges of Loyalist New Brunswick

Abstract

Why did the judges of New Brunswick's Supreme Court twice (1800, 1805) uphold the lawfulness of Negro slavery when they might, without unconvenience, have abolished it? Why did they deliberately reject the impulse towards abolition that had triumphed throughout the rest of the North Atlantic world? This paper addresses these issues in the context of the general legal debate on slavery in Loyalist New Brunswick.