ABSTRACT
The principal purpose of this chapter is to justify the continued use of equity by English law and to give some indication of its particular relevance to the world at the beginning of the 21st century. The argument that is made here is that there is something uniquely useful about equity in this busy, complex and worrying 21st century: its very adaptability and its metho dology of using highlevel principles to sculpt appropriate answers to practical problems. There is no argument here that rigid rules are inappropriate. Rather, it is said that a synthesis of the rigid certainties of common law with the flexibility of equity is necessary if the legal system is to meet the challenges that are placed before it on a daily basis: from resolving
ownership of the family home. The principles discussed in this book have covered the entire social firmament from the macro to the micro. Only equity has that reach – through injunc tions, through trusts, through estoppel and so forth – to perform that task of ensuring that the needs of the individual are not lost in the demands of the many.
