HET ENGELS RECHT IN DE JAREN 1820 E.V.
DICKENS'RECHTSKENNIS
1Common Law en equity.
In 1828 verscheen de negende uitgave van W.Tidd, Practice of the Court of King's Bench in Personal
Actions with reference to Cases of Practice in Court of Common Pleas, met 154 dicht bedrukte folio
bladzijden hoe een civiel proces te beginnen in genoemde gerechtshoven en in de Court of
Exchequer. Na zo'n begin kwamen pas de pleidooien voor de rechter aan de orde. Ook deze
waren aan gecompliceerde regels gebonden.
Tegen dit chaotische stelsel ontwikkelde zich vanaf de middeleeuwen de mogelijkheid om een
verzoekschrift aan de kroon te richten op grond van billijkheid (equity). Dit verzoekschrift werd
behandeld in het koninklijk secretariaat, waar, achter een open latwerk (chancel), de klerken
werkten:
de 'Chancery'. Hieruit ontstond de Court of Chancery met als rechter de Lord Chancellor. Hij
was de drager van het Groot Zegel. Ofschoon de betekenis van het Groot Zegel in begin van de
18de eeuw verviel, bleef het ambt van Lord Chancellor voortbestaan. Geleidelijk aan was echter
de Court of Chancery net zo star aan regels en vormen gebonden als de gewone rechtbanken
(courts of common law). Om willekeur te ontgaan werden ook hier de uitspraken vastgelegd en
kregen zij de werking van precedent. Regels gingen de billijkheid overheersen. Maar nochtans
bleef men van equity law spreken.
It is the height of irony, that the court which originated to provide an escape from the defects
of common Law procedure should in its later history have developed procedural defects worse
by far from those of the law. For two centuries before Dickens wrote Bleak House, the word
"chancery" had been synonymous with expense, delay and despair. That the court survived at all
owes some-thing to the vested interest of its official and still more to the fact that expense and
delay do not extinguish hope. Those landed families, if any there were, who escaped the throes of
Chancery litigation were fortunate indeed. (Baker, Introduction ch.6,p.95)
Het is niet mogelijk duidelijk te onderscheiden tussen zaken die tot de courts of common law
behoorden en die, waarvoor men zich tot een court of chancery moest wenden. In zijn Lecture on
Equity schreef in 1913 Maidand (p. 18):
'For suppose that we ask the question - What is Equity - We can only answer it by giving
some short account of certain courts of justice which were abolished over thirty years ago. In the
year 1875 we might have said 'Equity is that body of rules which is administered only by Courts
which are known as Court of Equity'. The definition of course would not have been very
satisfactiory, but now-a-days we are cut off even from this unsatisfactory definition. We have no
longer any courts which are merely courts of equity. Thus we are driven to say that Equity now is
that body of rules administered by our English courts of justice which, were it not for the
operation of the Judicature Acts, would be administered only by those courts which would be
known as Courts of Equity. This, you may well say, is but a poor thing to call a definition. Equity
is a certain portion of our existing substantive law, and yet in order that we may describe this
portion and mark it off from other portions we have to make reference to courts that are no
longer in existence. Still I fear that nothing better than this is possible. The only alternative would
be to make a list of the equitable rules and say that Equity consists of those rules. This, I say,
