Discuss the Impact of Equity Upon the Development of the Common Law

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Discuss the impact of equity upon the development of common law essay Common law is a body of ‘judge made’ rules that is similar, for all of the country. Law that has been developed by cases being judged in courts. One of the problems in common law was the recognition of legal wrongs, this was when there were many wrongs not recognised by common law, for example if you borrowed money to purchase land or a home, the lender could then enforce ownership of that land. Common law didn’t recognise the concept of a mortgage as we have nowadays. As well common law would not see your case if you did not have a pre-written writ, in order to begin your case in common law the complainant had to obtain a document known as a writ. If there was no writ appropriate to a claim there could be no action and which means no remedy. Common law was obsessed with formality; this means writs were very technical documents. If the wording of the writ was wrong then a person would lose their case. Equity is known as ‘gloss on common law’ as it is not a complete set of rules it offers judges a more fair and equitable remedy to dispute, either way judges can decide whether to use an equitable remedy or not. These laws were developed by judges, but can be identified as a separate body of laws from the common law. In order to create some certainty within the system, equitable maxims were created to outline what would be known as fair and unfair. These equitable maxims were known as guidelines. If a person was willing to go to the equity court, with these maxims you could predict the outcome of their case on whether they had a good chance of getting justice in the equity court or not, such as one maxim is ‘He who comes to equity must come with clean hands’ with this you know if you are partly as guilty as the party you will not be entitled to anything, you need to be innocent to
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