Equity is as long as the Chancellor’s foot. Critically discuss this statement.

On its initial reading and preliminary assessment, the title statement is immediately understood as a maxim intended to summarise equitys most obvious failing. Arbitrariness, where individual judges apply equitable remedies as they subjectively determine best is a common, long-standing equity criticism. Its doctrines evolved to provide an essential counter-balance to perceived common law rigidity, with its preference for certainty and predictability, and just results, not necessarily the fairest possible outcomes, the common law system primary objective. In the hands of the wrong judges, equity was regarded as dangerous, and a destabilising force threatening established precedent and orderly, incremental advancement of the law.

As this critical discussion tends to confirm, the title statement is equally open to more subtle analysis than the manner in which equity poses danger to co…(short extract)