COURSE TITLE: LAW OF EQUITY

AND TRUST
COURSE TEACHER: TOWFIQUE
AHMED
COURSE CODE: LLB2216
DATE OF SUBMISSION: 21
OCTOBER,2021
SEMESTER: FALL

Portray the relationship among ‘Equity, Common Law Submitted by: Sheikh Naser
and Statutory Law’ in the light of the 'History of Equity' ID: 20-43782-2
and your individual comprehension towards Natural
Justice
 Portray the relationship among ‘Equity, Common Law and Statutory Law’ in the
light of the 'History of Equity' and your individual comprehension towards Natural
Justice

Equity refers to a particular set of remedies and associated procedures involved

with civil law. These equitable doctrines and procedures are distinguished from
legal ones. A court will typically award equitable remedies when a legal remedy is
insufficient or inadequate. And Common law is a body of unwritten laws based on
legal precedents established by the courts. Common law influences the decision-
making process in unusual cases where the outcome cannot be determined based
on existing statutes or written rules of law. Statutory law or statute law is written
law passed by a body of legislature. This is as opposed to oral or customary law; or
regulatory law promulgated by the executive or common law of the judiciary.
Statutes may originate with national, state legislatures or local municipalities.
There is a certain relationship between the common law, equity, and Statutory
Law.

The Courts of Chancery introduced the law of equity to fill in the gaps of law that
common law failed to address. In addition, equity sought to avail a kind of
flexibility in the law because the common law presented a rigid system where writs
governed the system of judgment. Equity is fair and just ruled and investigated
availing fair judgment to individuals based on the rules that governed equity and
the circumstances of the case. The judges in the common law system declared the
substance of the law when they made decisions regarding the different cases of
law. The judges in the Chancery Courts who administered the rules of equity
brought about the system of judge-made law, which is based on precedents. The
judges investigate previous judgments made in order to direct the presentation of
justice in another case with similar facts. The system of judge-made law developed
over the years even after the merger of common law and equity to form the
common law that stands today. The common law availed only monetary remedies
when addressing grievances brought forward by the parties of a case to determine
which party can claim victory of a case. This limited the ability of the courts of law
to address other issues that fell outside the scope of monetary compensation. The
law of equity brought about a system where the judges weighed the particulars of
the case to determine whether to avail a remedy in terms of damages or provide a
remedy that did not border on financial grounds, such as an injunction, thus
boosting the remedies available to parties. Common law and equitable right has
two different functions in that, common law establishes general rules which
provide certainty, while equitable rights act as a check and balance of common
law. This arises from the strict application of the common law. Equity has been
important in supplementing many new remedies to the common law. Some of the
most important are those of specific performance, injunction, rescission, and
rectification. A decree of specific performance compels the defendant to perform
his side of the bargain while an injunction prevents someone from performing a
certain act. According to Haley and McMurtry, the concept of the trust has been
the vehicle for much creative activity on the part of the courts of equity. It
recognized the trust when the common law had refused to acknowledge the
existence of a beneficiary and provide remedies for breach of trust against a trustee
who fail to perform its duties. equitable rights act in personam, while common law
rights act in rem. This means that equity remedies are personal in that they exercise
against specific persons except, a bona fide purchaser of a legal estate for value
without notice of the prior equitable rights. The most distinct difference between
law and equity lies in the solutions that they offer. Common law usually awards
monetary damages in certain cases, but equity can decree for someone to act or not
to act on something. In cases wherein the aggrieved party does not want monetary
damages, the defendant can be ordered to return what he has taken. Law courts can
order writs which are harder to obtain and are less flexible than injunctions which
are ordered by equity courts. While a law court can involve a jury, there is no jury
involved in equity; the judge solely decides cases.

There are many relationships between legislative provisions and equity. For equity
is far from comprising an entirely judge-made collection of principles, Defences
and remedies which operate by themselves, in isolation from the wider legal world
to which statute contributes so much. Legislation and the common law are not
separate and independent sources of law; the one the concern of parliaments, and
the other the concern of courts. They exist in a symbiotic relationship. Further, in
some usages the expression equity includes those statutes which are closely related
to the application of non-statutory principles, or which have triggered the creation
of equitable principles, such as various statutes descended from the Statute of
Frauds 1677, Lord Cairns Act 1858 UK, and nineteenth-century trust legislation. It
is convenient to divide the subject into two broad categories. The first comprises
statutory reactions to equity. The second comprises equities reactions to statute. In
each category it is proposed to proceed through various sub-categories in
ascending order of the intensity which can be generated by the seeming collisions
between statute and equity.

Equity did not acquire the rigidity of the common law, there are rules of equity,
whereas once equitable rights were entirely discretionary, it must now obey the
rules of precedent as does the common law. While common law and equitable
rights have become closer, there are both some similarities and differences which
is reflected in the maxims. Therefore, equitable follows the law, show a
relationship between common law and equitable rights, in that equity will only
intervene when there are reasons to. According to Sir Nathan Write LJ in Lord
Dudley and Ward v Lady Dudley state that equity represent a later development of
law, laying an additional body of rules over the existing common law which, in
most cases, provides an adequate remedy. Equity, therefore, does not destroy the
law, nor create it, but assists it.