Equity (law) - Comparison of Equity Traditions in Common Law Countries

Comparison of Equity Traditions in Common Law Countries

As with the geographical transmission of any cultural artifact, direct English influence over equity weakened with time and distance, although the widespread import of printed opinions provided a corrective force, however long delayed. As the colonies gained political independence, each of their legal systems began drifting from the original in an irreversible departure from the English way of making laws and deciding cases. Nonetheless, each former colony acknowledged the reception of the common law and equity of England as a vital source of their jurisprudence.

The comparative question is an easy one to pose. Did English equity develop maturity early enough that all of its derivative systems necessarily tended toward the same doctrines, based on exactly the same set of general principles? Or did the split-offs of any of the colonies occur somewhere in the middle of its development so that substantial permanent differences resulted? One equity, or many?

The answer generally accepted in America, the earliest of the English colonies to gain independence, is the former, that the outcome of a case to be decided today upon principles of equity should be expected to be substantially the same whether decided in the UK or the US. The reasonableness of the belief enjoys strong historical support.

The perfection of modern equity as a system has been authoritatively credited to Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke who served as Chancellor 1737–1756.

For a review of several distinct approaches to identifying how law changes that utilize English legal history as a test bed see Robert Palmer, English Legal History course.