Importance Of Equity In Common Law

Plato stated “equity is a necessary element supplementary to the imperfect generalisation of legal rules”.

The term equity refers to the moral aspect of law where fairness and good conscious are taken into account when deciding case outcomes.

Equity is the principle of law established in the court of chancery by the Lord Chancellor. These principles progressed on account of the shortfalls and severity of the common law in regards to dealing with specific disputes. In equity the disputes are decided according to the facts of the case and good conscience. In comparison to early common law where judges created the writ system, which was simply a document setting out the details of the claim. The writ essentially became necessary, in most

The court of chancery established its own principles of remedies and law in regards to equity, providing justice in a flexible manner. However by the nineteenth century these remedies and law had become almost equally as rigid and technical as those at common law. The judicature Acts 1873 and 1875 were introduced to address these concerns and provide that all courts can now exercise both common law and equitable jurisdiction . Although the Act formed the supreme court of judicature by merging the common law courts with the court of chancery, parliament did not combine the two streams of law; the two streams have met and still run in the same channel, but their waters do not mix (Maitland) . Instead they made it possible to obtain in the one court both legal and equitable remedies, which previously required a visit to both courts to acquire a complete remedy. Yet the Acts did establish the supremacy of equity by providing that wherever there is any conflict or difference between the rules of equity and the rules of common law in regard to the same subject matter, the rules of equity shall prevail. As a result of a decision made by King James I, ‘where equity and law conflict, equity shall prevail’ this maxim of equity was established and is now preserved in s.49 of the Supreme Court Act 1981 . Common law is a form of law developed by judges by the use of court decisions and

The maxims of equity are a set of principles which are said to govern the way in which equity works. They mirror the qualities of what equity is about being just, fair and consionable. The maxims can be tailored to an individual case when applied and are not binding in any