Definition
Aequites (also rendered aequitas in classical Latin) is a Roman legal concept meaning equity, justice, or fairness as a normative principle underlying law. In Roman jurisprudence, it functioned as one of the recognized sources or foundations of law — not a body of rules unto itself, but a standard of reasonableness and just dealing to which legal interpretation could appeal when strict application of written law would produce an unjust result.
The term carries a dual sense in Roman legal thought: (1) the abstract ideal of justice or moral equality that law strives to reflect, and (2) a practical interpretive tool by which jurists and magistrates could moderate or supplement the rigidity of the ius civile (the strict civil law) when circumstances demanded.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in Roman law sources, civil law jurisdictions, or the historical foundations of equity jurisprudence will encounter aequites (and its singular form aequitas) as a conceptual ancestor to the Anglo-American doctrine of equity. The critical research trap is conflating the Roman aequitas with the English Court of Chancery's equity — they share a philosophical lineage but are institutionally and doctrinally distinct. Roman aequitas was never administered by a separate court system the way equity was in England; it operated as a jurisprudential principle internal to Roman legal reasoning.
When Bouvier's cites Cicero as naming aequitas a source of law, researchers should understand this places the concept within Roman jurisprudential theory, not Roman statutory or codified law. The reference to Hunter's Roman Law signals that the most productive secondary sources for this term are treatises on Roman and civil law rather than English or American common law references.
In the Law Mind corpus, aequitas connects directly to the broader history of equity doctrine, natural law theory, and the civil law tradition as it influenced Louisiana, Quebec, and other mixed jurisdictions. Researchers tracing the intellectual lineage of equity jurisdiction in Anglo-American law will find aequitas at the headwaters of that tradition but must be careful not to read modern equitable doctrines — injunctions, specific performance, constructive trusts — backward into the Roman concept.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's is sparse on this entry, providing little more than a three-word gloss (equity, justice, reason) and the Cicero attribution via Hunter's Roman Law. This brevity is itself informative: Bouvier's treats aequites as a term of art requiring minimal elaboration because its primary audience of American practitioners would encounter it only in historical or comparative legal contexts, not in daily practice.
What Bouvier's does not address — and what researchers should supplement from Roman law treatises — is the distinction Roman jurists drew between strict law (ius strictum) and equitable interpretation (ius aequum), or the role of the praetor's edict in giving procedural effect to equitable principles. Bouvier's entry, taken alone, risks reducing a rich jurisprudential concept to a synonym for the English word "equity," which understates both its philosophical depth and its specific Roman institutional context.
The Cicero attribution is significant: it places aequitas within natural law discourse, where justice is understood as a rational standard discoverable by reason, not merely a product of legislative will. This connects the term to a tradition that runs through Aquinas, Grotius, and into early modern natural law theory.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: EQUITY — for the doctrine's development from Roman aequitas through English Chancery and into American jurisprudence.