Equity
in law, the system of supplemental law administered in certain courts, founded on defined rules, recorded precedents, and established principles, the judges, however, liberally expounding and developing them to meet new exigencies. While it aims to assist the de- fects of the common law, by extending relief to those rights of property which the strict law does not recognize, and by giving more ample and distributive redress than the ordinary tribunals afford, equity by no means either controls, mi gates or supersedes the common law, but rather guides itself by its analogies, and does not assume any power to subvert its doctrines. Courts of equity grant redress to all parties where they have rights, ex æquo et bono, and modify and fashion that redress according to circumstances.
They bring before them all the parties interested in the subject-matter of the suit, and adjust the rights of all.
ERA. See EPOCH. miti