UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF LEGAL STUDIES

SUBJECT : LAW OF EQUITY, TRUST & SPECIFIC

DISCOVER . LEARN . EMPOWER

Course Outcome

CO Title
Number
CO1 The students will better appreciate the
concept of equity, justice and good con-
science

Will be covered in this

TOPIC: EQUITY- CONCEPT

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 INTRODUCTION

•“Equity” has many related but distinct meanings. Broadly, equity is the treatment of others with
justice and fairness. In Anglo-American legal systems, it refers, first, to a specific set of rules
governing a limited set of remedies and causes of action and, second, to a principled approach to
resolving legal disputes in order to avoid unjust results as a matter of law. Etymologically speaking,
the word equity means justice, impartiality, honesty, humanness.
•The word equity comes from the Latin aeguit, which means: suitability, justice, moderation,
impartiality. For the Greeks, the term epieiheia had more the value of social justice whose purpose
was to improve the law, where, because of its universal character showed a deficit.
•The word aequitas, the equivalent of the English term “equity” in Roman law, was defined as
“related to justice but distinguished from the positive law (ius)” in dictionaries of Roman law."
•Aristotle assimilated the equitable man to the man that knew to remember good rather than the
evil which he bore and who prefers solving a problem by means of explanations rather than facts.

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 DEFINITIONS

•Sir Henry Maine described this idea of equity in his classic work, Ancient Law, as “a set of legal
principles, entitled by their intrinsic superiority to supersede the older law.”
•Maitland defined equity as “that body of laws administered by our English courts of justice which,
were it not for the operation of the Judicature Acts, would be administered by courts that would be
known as Courts of Equity.”
•Plato expressed that "equity is a necessary clement supplementary to the imperfect
generalization of legal rules".
•Aristotle described equity as eternal and immutable and reiterated that "the equitable is just
and better than one kind of justice—not better than absolute justice, but better than the error
that arises from the absoluteness of the statement:... it is a correction of legal justice".

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•Maitland says that “we ought not to think of Common Law and equity as of two rival systems”
but, “we ought to think of equity as supplementary law, a sort of appendix added to our code, or a
sort of gloss written round our code……which used to be administered by the High Court of Justice
as part of the code.”
•Osborn’s Law Dictionary says primarily fairness to natural justice. A fresh body of rules by the side
of the original law, founded on distinct principles, and claiming to supersede the law in virtue of a
superior sanctity inherent in those principles. Equity is the body of rules formulated and
administered by the Court of Chancery to supplement the rules and procedure of the common law.
•Equity is a sort of justice, which was emerged in England besides from Common Law, which was
the responsibility of the Common Law Courts. There were many issues, which were not fallen in the
jurisdiction of the Common Law Courts. They were referred towards King who was responsible to
provide justice. He was decided the cases on the principles of natural justice. Natural Justice is
based on good consciousness, honesty, equality, truth, uprightness, good faith, fairness, ethics,
and morality etc. Later on when the cases exceeded then King delegated this power of
administration of justice on his behalf to the Chief of the House of Commons, named Chancery.

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•There are more moral concrete meanings of equity, which also explains
the existence of norms or multiple principles of the equity, and mention
the following: the work or the way of manifesting ourselves under the sign
of the economics, the politics, the juridical, the “load” of the moral
experience. Comparable to the categories of good, the honor and dignity,
humanness, honesty, etc., the equity as one of the principal notions of
ethics, as a moral value it essentially entails the fulfillment of the duty of
giving to anyone what he/she deserves, conditions the completion of rights
depending on the fulfillment of the corresponding duties and at the same
time it legitimates the moral obligation through the existence of some
moral rights. From the moral point of view, the man who respects the
demands of justice is a fair man, has the virtue of justice, and this virtue
belongs to the system of the moral qualities of the personality.
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PRINCIPLE OF EQUITY – BASIS OF
THE LAW
• Equity is a general principle of the law since it entails moderation in the
prescription of the rights and obligations by the legislator in the process
of elaborating the legal standards, but the principle of equity is not other
principle then the Justice, the Justice itself in consent with the Good of
the Moral, and the Justice is a fundamental right. It humanizes the
juridical equality introducing in the system of law in force the categories
of the natural morals, form whose perspective the rightfulness is a doing
into good and into liberty. Regarding the manifestation, and not its
nature, the equity spreads itself to the most distant spheres of the
system of the legal standards, fructifying even the strictly technical or
formal fields, apparently indifferent to the axiological preoccupations.

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• There are more moral concrete meanings of equity, which also explains
the existence of norms or multiple principles of the equity, and mention
the following: the work or the way of manifesting ourselves under the
sign of the economics, the politics, the juridical, the “load” of the moral
experience. Comparable to the categories of good, the honor and dignity,
humanness, honesty, etc., the equity as one of the principal notions of
ethics, as a moral value it essentially entails the fulfillment of the duty of
giving to anyone what he/she deserves, conditions the completion of
rights depending on the fulfillment of the corresponding duties and at
the same time it legitimates the moral obligation through the existence
of some moral rights. From the moral point of view, the man who
respects the demands of justice is a fair man, has the virtue of justice,
and this virtue belongs to the system of the moral qualities of the
personality.
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THANK YOU