Epieikeia and the Common Law: The Rise and Fall of Equitable Interpretation of English Statutes

It has been argued that the early modern association of the conscience-based jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery with Aristotelian equity or epieikeia was a rather natural one, which found fertile ground among those lawyers learned in civil and canon law that occupied the Chancery in early modern times. Indeed, medieval lawyers would probably have recognised the Chancery as a jurisdiction proceeding ex aequo et bono or de aequitate. However, the concept of equity did not have anything to do with St German’s epieikeia in this time. In fact, a more recent study by David Ibbetson has shown that anyone turning to civilian writings to explain the Chancery’s jurisdictions in terms of aequitas or epieikeia would have found the landscape far from intuitive.