what exactly is the subject equity about? (1 Viewer)

[Marmalade.]

I get the whole idea of the difference between common law and equity, but I don't understand how they can make a whole unit out of it. What kind of topics are studied? Equitable remedies in detail, I'd guess. But what else?

Do law firms consider this to be an important subject?

 

[MichaelJackson2]

equity is a pretty orgasmic subject - you study laws that originated in the court of chancery: estoppel, trusts, fiduciary duties, equitable duty of confidence, equitable remedies such as disgorgement etc. at my uni they've considered it to be a pretty useless subject so they've subsumed it with the Law of Trusts so now we have to complete Trusts over two semester rather than one.

For further information, see the Commonwealth Bank "equity mate?" ad campaign.

 

[neo o]

equity is a pretty orgasmic subject - you study laws that originated in the court of chancery: estoppel, trusts, fiduciary duties, equitable duty of confidence, equitable remedies such as disgorgement etc. at my uni they've considered it to be a pretty useless subject so they've subsumed it with the Law of Trusts so now we have to complete Trusts over two semester rather than one.

For further information, see the Commonwealth Bank "equity mate?" ad campaign.

A few universities don't study trusts separately from the rest of equity because generally equity permeates most core courses. You learn about estoppal and specific performance in contracts, fiduciary duties in corporations and injunctions in just about everything. Equity isn't useless.

Anyway, back to Marmalade. Trusts are quite complex and are used remedially, by operation of the law as well as more conventionally, so a huge chunk of a merged equity/trusts course is going to be spent on studying constructive trusts, resulting trusts and duties of trustees. Fiduciary duties and equitable remedies can get quite big, and you'll probably spend two weeks studying theory and history too.

 

[Lara1986]

At UWS we have Equity Trusts & Remedies 1 and ET&R 2.

Although they are changing the structure of the 2 units so they won't overlap as they do a bit now, the content will be the same, just studied in a different order/pattern - so, ss an idea of what it covers, this is the 'topic list' for each one at UWS:


ETR 1 =

• the nature of equity and its history
• equitable rights, titles, interests and equitable priorities
• equtable assignments
• estoppel in equity
• fiduciary obligations
• confidential information
• undue influence & unconscionable dealing
• Some equitable remedies including injunctions and tracing
• The nature, classification & construction of trusts
• Trustees powers, duties, rights & liabilities

ETR 2 =

• intro to remedies
• damages in tort & contract
• damages in equity & account of profits
• rescission & restitution
• declarations & specific erformance
• injunctions, mareva orders, anton piller orders, rectification, delivery up
• Intro to trusts law - trusts vs other concepts, 3 certainties for creation of express trusts, writing requirements for certain transactions
• complete constitution of a voluntary trust
• trustees duties, powers, rights, appointment, retirement, removal, liabilities
• charitable trusts
• implied/resulting trusts
• constructive trusts
• rights of life tenant & remainderman re: income & capital
• rule against perpetuities and rule against accumulations

So basically UWS, the 'equity' subject covers general principles of equity law and 'eqiutable transactions', trusts law and general remedies law, both some CL remedies and general equitable remedies.

Its a really varied subject but if you complete it after having done a few semesters, although i personally hated the subject for various reasons, it is made somewhat more easy to handle by teh fact that a few topics will be very familiar. For example - at UWS, the remedies topics you generally cover to varying extents throughout torts, contracts, property and other units previously completed.