LW598 Equity & Trusts
Seminar 1 (week 13): Recollecting and Reconceiving Equity
This is an introductory seminar to get to know each other and the module and begin thinking
about what ‘equity’ means. It is important that you prepare and attend so that no time is
wasted in week 14.
Before the seminar:
Refer to general texts on the English legal system and your notes from Foundations of
Property and Land Law to refresh your memory on the following and then complete the
multi-choice quiz on Moodle.
The Court of Equity
The High Court
The Chancery Division
The Master of Rolls
The Office of Lord Chancellor
A trust
A legal right
An equitable interest
An equitable remedy
Seminar preparation:
Read the following extract from Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics (Book V, ch 10):
‘Our next subject is equity and the equitable (to epiekes), and their respective
relations to justice and the just. For on examination they appear to be neither
absolutely the same nor generically different; and while we sometime praise what is
equitable and the equitable man (so that we apply the name by way of praise even to
instances of the other virtues, instead of ‘good’ meaning by epieikestebon that a thing
is better), at other times, when we reason it out, it seems strange if the equitable,
being something different from the just, is yet praiseworthy; for either the just or the
equitable is not good, if they are different; or, if both are good, they are the same.
These, then, are pretty much the considerations that give rise to the problem about
the equitable; they are all in a sense correct and not opposed to one another; for the
equitable, though it is better than one kind of justice, yet is just, and it is not as being
a different class of thing that it is better than the just. The same thing, then, is just
and equitable, and while both are good the equitable is superior. What creates the
problem is that the equitable is just, but not the legally just but a correction of legal
justice. The reason is that all law is universal but about some things it is not possible
to make a universal statement which shall be correct. In those cases, then, in which it
is necessary to speak universally, but not possible to do so correctly, the law takes
the usual case, though it is not ignorant of the possibility of error. And it is none the
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Seminar 1 (week 13): Recollecting and Reconceiving Equity
This is an introductory seminar to get to know each other and the module and begin thinking
about what ‘equity’ means. It is important that you prepare and attend so that no time is
wasted in week 14.
Before the seminar:
Refer to general texts on the English legal system and your notes from Foundations of
Property and Land Law to refresh your memory on the following and then complete the
multi-choice quiz on Moodle.
The Court of Equity
The High Court
The Chancery Division
The Master of Rolls
The Office of Lord Chancellor
A trust
A legal right
An equitable interest
An equitable remedy
Seminar preparation:
Read the following extract from Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics (Book V, ch 10):
‘Our next subject is equity and the equitable (to epiekes), and their respective
relations to justice and the just. For on examination they appear to be neither
absolutely the same nor generically different; and while we sometime praise what is
equitable and the equitable man (so that we apply the name by way of praise even to
instances of the other virtues, instead of ‘good’ meaning by epieikestebon that a thing
is better), at other times, when we reason it out, it seems strange if the equitable,
being something different from the just, is yet praiseworthy; for either the just or the
equitable is not good, if they are different; or, if both are good, they are the same.
These, then, are pretty much the considerations that give rise to the problem about
the equitable; they are all in a sense correct and not opposed to one another; for the
equitable, though it is better than one kind of justice, yet is just, and it is not as being
a different class of thing that it is better than the just. The same thing, then, is just
and equitable, and while both are good the equitable is superior. What creates the
problem is that the equitable is just, but not the legally just but a correction of legal
justice. The reason is that all law is universal but about some things it is not possible
to make a universal statement which shall be correct. In those cases, then, in which it
is necessary to speak universally, but not possible to do so correctly, the law takes
the usual case, though it is not ignorant of the possibility of error. And it is none the
1
