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Show EQUITY IS A ROGUISH THING. FOR LAW WE IIAVE A MEASURE, KNOW WHAT TO TRUST TO; EQUITY IS ACCORDING TO THE CONSCIENCE OF HIM THAT IS CHANCELLOR, AND AS THAT IS LARGER OR; NARROWER, SO IS EQUnY. IT IS ALL ONE AS IF THEY SHOULD MAKE THE STANDARD FOR THE MEASURE WE CALL A TOOT" A CHANCELLOR'S FOOT; WHAT AN UNCERTAIN THING Tins WOULD BE! ONE CHANCELLOR HAS A LONG FOOT, ANOTHER A SHORT FOOT, A THIRD AN INDIFFERENT IN-DIFFERENT FOOT. IT IS Tlffi SAME FN THE CHANCELLOR'S CHAN-CELLOR'S CONSCIENCE. Table Talk, John Selden (1584-1664) This was the opinion of John Seldon in the years which immediately preceded the triumph of the Chancellor over the law of the King's Courts. Last week we brought the development de-velopment of Equity up through thr-ough the thirteenth thirt-eenth century. Through the fourteenth century cen-tury Equity suffered suf-fered at the hands of the luderes of the . T .".--J " f '' " J2 FORM REAL ESTATE CONTRACTS CON-TRACTS CURRENTLY IN USE IN Tlffi STATE OF UT1AH. OUR SUPREME COURT HAS BEEN ON RECORD FOR MANY YEARS AS REFUSING TO ENFORCE A PENALTY IN A LAND CONTRACT. ELLESMERE vs. COKE Chancellor Ellejsmere and Chief Justice Coke are the two chief protagonists in the drama which finally brought the Chancellor the undisputed power to supervise the judgements judge-ments of the King's Courts. Chancellor Ellesmere coming fresh from a defeat of his power to give relief after a law judgement had been rendered was precipitated into a new attempt to curb his power. This legal Armageddon was instigated by Sir Edward Coke, The Lord Chief Justice of England, and the stormy petrel of English legal circles. Coke fought with anyone and everyone who opposed him and this included the King, whichever one happened to be on the throne. He was the lifelong life-long foe of Sir Francis Bacon, and this worked to his disadvantage dis-advantage as we shall see. This final battle arose in this fashion. It seems there were two notorious swindlers, named Allen and Glenville. They had secured a judgement from the law- courts by practicing fraud. For this the Chancellor punished them under his equitable powers. This action of the Chancellor pricked Chief Justice Coke's ire, and he persuaded the two swindlers to indict the prosecutors and their counsel because they had called into question a judgment of the King's Court. This they did, but the Chancellor appealed to the King (the fountainhead of all justice) and the King referred the matter to the Attorney General and other prominent lawyers, among them Sir Francis 'Bacon. This made a definite decision in favor of the Chancellor's power, much to Bacon's satisfaction and to Coke's chagrin. Thus was established the Chancellors indisputable power to issue injunctions against the courts of law and override the inadequate remedies of the common law. Next week we shall trace some af the modern results of the long and stormy battle of Equity to assert itself as an instrument of justice in the Anglo-American court system. See you then. King's Courts, Mr. Maughan as it had in the past. But for a body of rules so urgently needed as were those of Equity, the development of them was inevitable and the latter half of the fifteenth century saw the Chancellor, as the administrator adminis-trator of justice, begin to come into his own. In the latter part of the , fifteenth century, the chancellor began to make decrees on his own authority. These decrees were directed toward the controversies, which, if solved under common law of the day, would have produced inadequate in-adequate relief. Thus, the watchword and yardstick which the Chancellor used to signal his intervention was, "Is the remedy at law Inadequate." - Under the common law forms of action in use at the time, the remedy at law was often inadequate. For example, where the common law could only make an award of money ' damages -. here the Chancellor could step in and grant specific performance. He would do this by making a decree ordering the person in the wrong to personally do what should be done, e.g., suppose a person had been wrongfully wrong-fully deprived of some item of personal property which could not be replaced, the money damages at law would-not would-not do justice, but the Chancellor could do justice by effecting the specific return of the property. Another example is that of the unsealed contract, here the law would do nothing in the absence of a seal, but Equity through the Chancellor would take jurisdiction juris-diction and give relief. Contracts Con-tracts which were under seal, but which have been formed through fraud or mistake could not be the subject, of any relief in the courts of law, but here again the Chancellor took jurisdiction to give relief. . Other examples are those where equity would not allow the enforcement of a penalty provision in a contract, but would limit the recovery to the damages actually sustained. WE IIAVE EXAMPLES OF THE USE OF THE LATTER PRINCIPLE IN TID3 INTERPRETATION IN-TERPRETATION OF THE PROVISIONS OF THE UNI- A Parthian Shot from John Selden, . HUMDHTY . IS A VIRTUE ALL PREACH, NONE PRACTICE, YET EVERYBODY IS CONTENT TO HEAR. |