Common Law and Equity

The Development of Common uprightness and equity Common Law has been functioning in England since the 1250s, two centuries subsequently William the conqueror defeated Earl Harold Godwinson in the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and became King. It was then(prenominal) in 1066 that Law began to be standardised. There were, however, problems with the Common Law organization and hoi polloi were becoming dissatisfied with the remedies distributed by the move. As a result, the Court of Chancery was established and could pull up stakes whatever recreate best conform to the grounds.This type of umpire became known as equity. When William the Conqueror gained the English raft in 1066, he constituted the Curia Regis, an instrument he used to direct the country and a act for deciding disputes. Representatives from the Regis were sent out to the opposite localities of the country to check local administration and were smart seted to make sound judgment of the effectiveness of the cu stom rights functioning in their designated locality and report ass to the King in Westminster.When the representatives were summoned back, they were able to discuss the various customs of every last(predicate)(prenominal) locality and were able to form, through rejecting unreasonable polices and accepting those that appe atomic number 18d to be rational, a consistent body of rules. During the process of sifting, the principle of stare decisis was created, which translates to let the lastity stand. Whenever a untested problem of law was to be decided, the ratiocination formed a rule and it was mandatory that the rule was followed in all similar gaucheries. By 1250, a ballpark law had been established, that ruled the wholly country.However problems soon arose regarding the remedies distributed by the Common Law Court and people soon became dissatisfied with the brass. One of the first complaints was concerned with the writ system. In the public law moves, civil action s had to be started by a writ. Early on, new writs were created to suit new circumstances, however this stopped in the thirteenth century. Litigants had to proceed their circumstances to one of the available types of writ. If the case did non fall into the animated writ, the case could not be taken to romance.Many people found their cases to be rejected for the reason that in that location was no writ to satisfy their case and so they were not given justice. A second complaint was link to the remedy of damages. What the court did not realise was that money was not endlessly an adequate solution to every problem. A final problem that arose with the system was that it was inflexible. The principle of stare decisis meant that when a decision was given in a case of a certain kind, the same legal principle had to be followed in subsequent cases, no matter what the situation of the claimant.As a result, people started to petition the king who was thought of as the fountain of justi ce. later on a while, the king passed on these petitions to the Chancellor who was usually a ingredient of the clergy and was thought of as the keeper of the kings conscience. out front long, litigants began to petition the Chancellor himself and by 1474 the Chancellor had begun to make decisions on the cases on his own authority rather than as a substitute for the king. This was the first base of the court of Chancery.In the court of Chancery, litigants appeared before the Chancellor and he would deliver a verdict on the presented case based on his own mannequin view of the situation. Unlike the Common Law court, the court of Chancery could provide whatever remedy best suited the case and this type of justice became known as equity. Before ingenuous rules could be use, equity devised maxims, actual to certify that the verdicts made were morally fair, which had to be contemplated prior to a final court decision.One of these maxims, He who comes to equity must come with cle an detainment, states that claimants who have in some way been in the wrong in the past will not be granted an equitable remedy. An example illustrating this maxim would be the D+C Builders v Rees (1966) case, were the Rees was denied an equitable estoppel as they had taken unfair advantage of the builders financial difficulties and thus had not come with clean hands. A second maxim, He who seeks equity, must do equity, articulates that anyone who seeks equitable relief must be prepared to act fairly towards their opponent.In the Chappel v Times Newspapers ltd (1975) case, newspaper employees applied for an injunction to pr upshot their employers from carrying out the threat of sacking them unless they stopped their peach action. The court said that in order for them to be awarded the remedy, the learnrs should withdraw their strike action if the injunction was granted. The employees refused and so the injunction was not granted. Another maxim is Delay defeats equity. This maxim states that where a claimant takes an unreasonably long beat to bring an action, equitable remedies will not be available.This is exemplified in the hitchhike v International Galleries (1950) case where the claimant, Leaf, had bought a painting for a right smart amount of money however he found, five years later, that it was not the genuine constable he thought it was. When he claimed the equitable remedy of rescission, it was refused as the delay had been too long. In response to the complaints regarding the remedies offered by the plebeianalty law courts, equity increased the number of remedies available to the wronged party.Instead of just macrocosm given then remedy of damages, claimants could now be granted an injunction, which is an order given to defendants to do or not do something, specific performance, which compels a part to fulfil a previous agreement, a rescission, which restores parties of a bosom to the position they were in before the contract was signed and rectification, which is an order that alters the row of a document which does not express the true intentions of the parties to it.These remedies offered by the court of chancery are discretionary. A claimant who wins a joint law court case is given the remedy of damages as of right, however the courts may choose whether or not to award an equitable remedy. Equitable remedies are therefore not given as of right. Due to the improvements made by equity regarding remedies, the court of chancery became very popular and caused some gall amongst the car park law courts.The lawyers of the rough-cut law courts argued that the quality of the decisions made in the court of chancery wide-ranging with the length of the chancellors foot, nitty-gritty that the outcome of each case depended on the qualities of the individual chancellor. The tension mingled with the two courts grew to an all-time high in the Earl of Oxfords case (1615), where a judgment of Chief Justice Coke was allegedly o btained by fraud. The master Chancellor issued a common injunction of the Chancery prohibiting the enforcement of the common law order.The two courts became locked in a stalemate, and the matter was eventually referred to the attorney General. The Attorney General upheld the use of the common injunction and concluded that in the event of any conflict between the common law and equity, equity would prevail. Equitys primacy in England was later enshrined in the bench Acts (1873-75), which provided that equity and common law could both be operated in the same court and there would no longer be divergent procedures for requesting remedies from equity and the common law.To conclude, it was William the Conqueror who came up with the initial idea of establishing a common law and by and by two centuries of sifting through the custom laws of the numerous localities of the country, a common law had been established that ruled the whole of the country. However problems in the common law s ystem soon arose regarding the writ system, the inflexibility of the system, and the remedy of damages. The court of chancery was established and it is here that equity functioned.Equity brought in new equitable remedies such as injunctions, specific performance, rescissions, and rectifications however before these remedies could be granted, the case being presented had to conform to the equitable maxims which were developed to certify that the verdicts made were morally fair. The court of chancery became very popular and caused some resentment amongst the common law courts, whose lawyers argued that the quality of the decisions made in the court of chancery varied with the length of the Chancellors foot.As a result of the Earl of Oxford case, whenever there is conflict between the common law courts and equity, equity will prevail, which allows for the further development of equity today. The Judicature Acts of the 1870s provided that equity and common law could both be operated in the same court and there would no longer be different procedures for requesting remedies from equity and the common law. In short terms, if it was not for common law and the faults found in its system, equity would cease to exist.