Just days after Slave Commissioner Edward Loring ruled on the Burns case, the Wisconsin Supreme Court's Abram Smith determined the law was unconstitutional when he ruled on Joshua's escape Glover. in Canada. Since the South had fugitive slave laws, the North had personal liberty laws that contradicted the former almost exactly. They provided, among other things, for jury trials for escaped slaves, which differed from state to state. These laws essentially allowed slaves and ex-slaves to be treated as human beings, as equals, which infuriated the Southern states..