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LAW AND EQUITY PRINCIPLES This essay summarizes

s justice that goes beyond the written law" and "embodies the highest justice because it is flexible and gives priority to the actual situation" of the persons involved and is faithful to "the spirit of the law" (Peter Charles Hoffer, The Law's Conscience Equitable Constitutionalism in America 8 (1990); and Gary L. McDowell, Equity and the Constitution The Supreme Court, Equitable Relief, and Public Policy 16-17 (1982)).

The Romans agreed with Aristotle that equity, aequitas, represented universal principles which went beyond the letter of the law. That law, which Cicero said is "right reason", derived its force from nature and "establishes justice." (Cicero, On the Laws, Book I, ch. 12, 412-413 in The Natural Law Reader, at 57 (Brendan F. Brown ed., 1960)). Always practical, the Romans added to their commercial codes the equitable concepts of good faith (bona fide) and full disclosure.

Antecedents in English Law. One of the translators of Roman natural law to England was the early 16th century legal scholar Christopher St. Germain who defined equity as "a right wiseness that considereth all the particular circumstances of the deed, the which also is tempered with the sweetness of mercy." (McDowell, supra, 23). Equity as a separate body of jurisprudence began to develop in the early 14th century around the office of the King's Chancellor. The original purpose of equity courts or Courts of Chancery was "to allow individuals who believed themselves without remedy or without adequate remedy before the common law to appeal to the king's conscience for a special dispensation." (McDowell, supra, 75).

Equity courts and equitable doctrines, procedures and remedies largely developed then to fill vacuums left by the rigidities or inadequate rights and remedies afforded by the common law courts. Some early legal scholars like William Blackstone in his writings in 1765-1769 insisted that equity was "purely auxiliary to law" and that ...

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LAW AND EQUITY PRINCIPLES This essay summarizes. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 12:19, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1707550.html