One of the courts of equity in England and Wales. The High Court of Chancery was the court that developed from the Lord Chancellor's jurisdiction. Unlike the common law courts, which were rigidly based on precedent, the Lord Chancellor had jurisdiction to determine cases, on behalf of the King, according to equity or fairness rather than according to the strict letter of the law. Gradually the rules of equity also became codified, but they preserve important innovations, such as mandatory orders and injunctions, trusts, etc. See equity.
The High Court of Chancery was merged with the common law courts in 1873, and common law judges given the power to administer equity. In other common lawjurisdictions most states either (1) abolished chancery courts and merged the powers of the courts of equity with the common law courts, thus making it possible for one to seek equitable relief at the same time as legal relief or (2) made the equitable jurisdiction the responsibility of a separate chancery division of the court of general jurisdiction. However, a few American states, like Delaware, chose to retain completely separate Courts of Chancery. Judges who sit on such courts are called Chancellors.
One important distinction between these courts (at least in the United States, where juries still commonly hear civil cases) is that generally a jury trial is not possible in equitable actions as only a judge can dispense equity; a jury, while it can answer questions of fact, has no power to answer questions that involve interpretation of the law. Another important distinction is that the law of equity is a set of principles that are based upon the discretion of the judge interpreting them.
Henceforward chancery and common law courts have exhibited the anomaly of two co-ordinate sets of tribunals, empowered to deal with the same matters, and compelled to proceed in many cases on wholly different principles.
In August 1899 the crown consented to the appointment of a new judge of the High Court in the chancery division on an address from both Houses of Parliament, pursuant to the 87th section of the Appellate Jurisdiction Act 1876.
The great difficulty in the chancery division always was to secure the continuous hearing of actions with witnesses, as nearly one-half of the judge's time was taken up with cases adjourned to him from chambers and other administrative business and non-witness actions and motions.
The "law courts" or "courts of law" were the courts all over England that enforced the king's laws in medieval times, but the "chancerycourts" or "courts of equity" evolved from his discretionary decisions based on the specific facts of a single case.
The kinds of relief chancerycourts could grant included injunctions (which are court orders not to do something specific, like bulldoze a fence someone else claims is theirs) and court orders requiring a person to take some specified action (like sign over the deed for a certain parcel of real estate).
Whereas the laws a court of law enforced were often written down by whoever made the laws, the principles a court of equity applied were not, so a list of the principles evolved as the Maxims of equity.
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