Equity (law)

In jurisdictions following the English common law system, Equity refers to the body of law which was developed in the English Court of Chancery and which is now administered concurrently with the common law.

For much of its history, the English common law was principally developed and administered in the central royal courts: the Court of King's Bench, the Court of Common Pleas, and the Exchequer. Equity was the name given to the law which was administered in the Court of Chancery. The Judicature Reforms in the 1870s effected a procedural fusion of the two bodies of law, ending their institutional separation. The reforms did not effect any substantive fusion, however. Judicial or academic reasoning which assumes the contrary amounts to a "fusion fallacy".