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Daniel J Carr, Ideas of Equity

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
Date01 May 2018
DOI10.3366/elr.2018.0492
Pages314-315
Published date01 May 2018

The book under review is the fifth volume in the Studies in Scots Law series by the Edinburgh Legal Education Trust. The series is a celebration of those doctoral theses completed recently on Scots private law, typically at the University of Edinburgh but on this occasion at the University of Cambridge. This new book makes an excellent addition to the series.

The book examines the changing understandings of equity in Scotland, both in general terms since the early-modern period and more specifically in connection to four different areas of law. This book is most welcome. The topic of Scottish equity had previously not been the subject of a large-scale study since the doctoral thesis of the late Professor David M Walker, in 1952. This new book therefore contributes greatly to the scholarship of private law by providing a new analysis of this topic. That new analysis is also remarkably timely. An increasing number of Scotland's Law Schools are now teaching courses on the English law of equity as part of their move to offer a Common Law or dual-qualifying law degree. It is well known that equity is recognised by English law as a distinct legal discipline and area of practice, but lectures on English equity in Scottish Law Schools will often lead to questions as to how “equity” is understood within the context of Scots law and how the two might be compared. The book under review allows a framework both for understanding Scottish equity and to begin those comparative discussions.

The book is structured into seven chapters. The first chapter is the introduction. It sets out the volume's purpose and scope and then provides short summaries of the aims and findings of the other chapters. The second chapter, “Historical understandings of equity”, considers the essential nature of Scottish equity and summarises chronologically the various ideas about equity expressed by some of Scotland's legal writers and judges since the seventeenth century. Particular attention is here given to the eighteenth-century judge and polymath, Henry Home, Lord Kames, whose writings have had considerable influence in this area. Dr Carr is already recognised as an expert on Kames, and his valuable...

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