Introduction of Common Law

Common law is the part of English law that is derived from practice and judicial precedent rather than specific act or rule. It is also the form of unwritten law that uses past trend and evidence to settle legal problems in current time.

Common law was initially derived from England and its colonies and later followed in different states of United States as well as rest of the world. Common law views the similarity between cases and solved with the references that was applied previously. Common law gives competition to the suffered party due to the violation of contracts and commends the actual person who is truly a owner of the property.

Common law sometimes may leave the drawback that it can fail to recognize the actual victim who should get the competition. Those who are victim should have strong evidence that they have been suffered otherwise they may not get the deserved compensation. There are mainly two types of damages, they are discussed below:

1. Nominal DamageNominal Damages refers to the small compensation that a applicant gets because of the small harm that the sufferer faced. The quantity of price may include not the whole sum of money sometime.

2. Specific Damage Specific Damage refers to the type of damage where specific damage may be compensating because of violation of contract by other party who violated the contract.

It is the responsibility of the victim party that they must give the information to the authority about the violation of contract and law and the effect they are bearing because of that. The method of calculating damage is, evaluation of expected cost till this date how the situation would be, if there was no complain from the victim party.Common law is unable to provide competition to non-measuring cases such as damages to the environment, specific creatures and pollution. Neither can it compensate in the case where people loss enjoyment, mental balance etc. common law is always ignoring rigidity from starting to current time. Since, common law is unable to give compensation in such un-measurable case, a new for of law was developed to solve those cases and give appropriate decisions on them which is called Equity law. Further description of equity law is mentioned below.

Equity

The court of Chancery defines “equity is the rule that has been developed to bring easiness in the harshness of the common law.” Equity law in general sense is the set of legal principles which support authoritarian rules of law that would be applied strictly in any case.

Equity is commonly taken as the way to simplify the rigidity of common law, by letting the court to utilize their justice and provide justice in a very fair way that implies natural law. In practice it is seen that modern equity system is bounded by practical and substantive rules and journalist from different part of world like Australian and English legal Journalist give focus to technical part of equity. To conduct the equity there are 12 indistinct ethical statements that are applied with additional 5 similar ethical statements.

The existence of equity was because of inflexibility of common law in various cases. The equity system has not been criticized from its beginning phase where the Lord Chancellor used to judge different cases infrequently with the basis of his own ideology and principles. After losing its flexibility till 17th century, equity was merged into a system of precedent similarly as its common-law cousin. The equity system shortly get acceptance from various part because of its efficiency and was able to get the level of common law.

3 Major Changes because of Equity:

It is common that the time changes and so do other things according to the time. The major thing that was changed along with time was ‘law’. With the development of equity it has overall changed the system of law and helped to fix a lot of faults in English law. The change was essence of that time and occurred according to the need because the legal system was much weak that public was unable to assure their safety because of the legal system. The evolution of equity made the worst thing go better and change the philosophies in correct time without any complex situation. The major change that was made by equity has been discussed below:

1. Equity introduced defensive right to the public which was absent in common law resulting the strike of dispute resolution came into practice and procedure regarding the control of Fair Work Australia (FWA) were maintained.

2. It helped in establishing an effective procedure that at the end made easy to keep friendly environment and good relation between employee and employer. This was helpful in sorting out the disagreement between any business organizations too.

3. The third major change made by the equity system was helping to provide easier and better remedies such as; specific performance and injunctions, where in common law was only damage. This made the dispute resolution process quick, fair, sensible and transparent.

Available of Creative Remedies

The term ‘Remedy’ refers to the application of corrective action or treatment to faults and errors. This process rectifies and prevents an error and helps imposing the right of and individual. There are three types of major remedies according to the American law;

- Establishing legal law of England and using the system to provide compensation for sufferer

- Chancery from England, which is derived from British through Chancellor and it, is process of giving pressure for someone who had given words to fulfill some task.

- The last type of remedy is called declaratory remedy which is used for resolving the law which is associated with certain proofs of an individual that was deprived from any knowledge to the parties.

It is well known that established remedies of equity are successful as well as satisfactory these days. The application of remedies only come into action when someone in the contract violets the terms and condition resulting the other party into loss in any way. The party who is responsible in violation of agreement is called ‘Guilt’ and other party is called ‘injured’ party.

According to the system the guilty party should bear the responsibility of compensating the victim in any of the following way:

1. Suit for damages:This refers to the process of compensating victim party in term of cash because of violating the contract by guilty party.

2. Suit for Rescission:This remedy makes guilt party out of the contract because of the obligation of injured party.

3. Suit for specific performance;This remedy forcefully made the party to fulfill the contracts who had refused.

4. Suit for quantum meruit;It provides the payment of the victim party who had earned it through the work done and completion.

5. Suit for injunction:It is a command of court that orders to continue and complete an incomplete act.

All of above remedies are contributing the important role in providing appropriate compensation to victim and maintain law and order.

Major changes between Common Law and Equity

Common law as well Equity both are widely used system and have their own ideology of solving legal problems. They were used by a large number of people and were updated according to the preference of people. The major changes that have been made between common law and equity have been described below:

1. As the passing of the time, a dispute arose between court of equity and court of law in the topic that the decision made by common law overruled the decision made by equity. Finally in the year 1615 this conflict was resolved while giving decision in the case ‘‘Earl of Oxford” where the king declared that equity must be given priority between common law and equity.

2. The other major problem at that time was that the chancellors were not well known about the equity system. Hence the huge problem created because of that was, if one chancellor decides the case and went to other chancellor the decision would be completely altered than that of previous decision. This problem was finally solved by transforming those chancellors which has been trained in the common law; hence equity gradually became more trustworthy body of ideology and almost became the official law as before common law was in the place.

3. From the year 1873 to 1875 the process of merging two courts taken into action which was merged according to chronological separation system. At that time the merging of equity law court and court of common law was taken into action. It became more practicable that, the case related to equity was presented to equity section and case related to common law was presented to court of common law. This procedure helped in minimizing cost as well as helped in saving time and became more effective way to solve the cases.

Types of Equity Law

The equity law system has its own specialty since its development. It has its own way to deal with different cases and condition. There are two major types of equity that has been mentioned and discussed below:

1. Specific Performance

It is the major type in equity which deals about the supremacy of where the common law court could not get the authority to impose the order or command to defendant for fulfilling its contractual obligation. The court of equity has been utilizing all this power as the specific performance of the system.

This system is taken as the alternate action to pay the damages and categorized as an equitable remedy that normally used in real property case. Thought it is basically opposite of prohibitory command but there are compulsory commands included under it that influence parallel to specific performance. There are some conditions for this system. If there are following reasons, than specific performance is not granted: The reschedule action has been done because of the excessive work of

applicant. If it possibly can cause unwanted difficulty and problems to the respondent. If the accuser has not complaint through good influence. If it is in the contract of the employment. For the sale of non unique sales item.

It may be hard to approve the implementation and arrangement for the selling the goods since it is found hard to the administrate the commands of the courts and usually the solution that has been offered is satisfactory as well as if the good is also irreplaceable specific performance can be forced to implement.

InjunctionIt is another type of equity and also important part of equity law which generally commands the defendant not to run specific tasks and do particular things. Injunction in another word is the obtainable damage that is resulted from not doing the specific task that was mentioned in contract. Hence the obtained damage can measure the amount of loss that a victim has been bearing. Injunction is also taken as equitable remedy.

The court issues injunction sensibly, using their authority only when it felt there is huge essentiality of injunction. Court always believe that the, due to the rejection of injunction there may be difficulty to the parties because the injunctive support may not be the appropriate solution that is significantly approved. There are various types of injunctions which have been described below;

1. Preliminary Injunctions:This type of injunction is short term remedy which helps in protecting the special material in the ‘as it is’ condition. The major task of this injunction is to protect the current condition and provide immediate relief to them.

2. Preventive Injunctions:This injunction assist an individual in avoiding the negative things to do that is restricted or prohibited by the act. It conserves the status quo but cannot be used in undoing the tasks that had already been done.

3. Mandatory Injunctions:This is the type of injunction that commands any party to follow a positive act or to refer a specified course of order for conducting.

4. Perpetual Injunction:It is also called the final judgments which, at the end dispose the injunctions outfit in well organized form. It is usually granted only after following a trial.

5. Restraining Orders These are permitted to preserve the situation of the topic which was discussed till the investigation, for the purpose of submitting a temporary injunction.

ConclusionTo sum up, it can be said that there are various aspects of common law as well as in the equity law. If the situation occurred when any party in the contract violated the terms and condition of the agreement then they can claim for the compensation and they should be provided the compensation according to the law. Other than that we also discussed about the changes in the law system that has been made by equity and various type of equity that are in practice to solve different problems and cases.