Equity: Conscience Goes to Market by Irit Samet

Abstract

Abstract In first-year Contract Law, I was mildly bemused to learn that from approximately the fourteenth to nineteenth century, England found itself with two separate court systems dispensing two separate bodies of law. There was the familiar, predictable Common Law, and then there was “Equity,” dishing out relief to deserving parties as a matter of good “conscience.” To the green law student who expected this profession to provide hardline rules, Equity’s doctrines appeared annoyingly vague. Further, it seemed incongruous with the rule of law (ROL) that, even after the fusion of the two court systems, Equity endured as a doctrinally distinct body of law.