Purpose and best uses
Equity is a specialized research area for equitable doctrines, remedies, and related source material. The page introduces subjects such as injunctions, specific performance, trusts, fiduciary duties, and rescission, then offers a focused search across available equity sources. Use it when your research concerns the reasoning or remedies associated with equity and you want a more directed starting point than a search across the entire library. It is also useful for learning the terminology that appears in older treatises and chancery opinions.
The search results are separated into Court of Chancery opinions and classical doctrine. The page also includes an introductory description of courts associated with equity practice and a collection of traditional maxims. These elements serve different purposes. Opinions provide decisions to read in their factual and procedural setting. Classical works explain historical doctrine. Maxims offer compact statements that can help orient further reading toward the decisions themselves.
How to use it well
Search for a defined concept rather than enter every fact of a case at once. The interface suggests terms such as constructive trust, specific performance, entire fairness, and clean hands. Open a promising result and read the underlying source, noting whether it is an opinion or a secondary work. For an opinion, check the court, date, issue, and disposition. For a treatise, check the author and edition. Those details help you understand what question the source actually addresses and what further research is needed.
Use the introductory material as a map of subjects to explore. When your question concerns a particular state or a current proceeding, take that requirement into Ask or Search and investigate the relevant primary sources. Equity can help identify useful terminology and historical reasoning, while the broader research tools can help locate additional material outside the specialized collection. The relationship between the tools is complementary: a focused source collection can sharpen the inquiry before you broaden it.
Example and workflow
Suppose a fictional dispute raises questions about obtaining a particular performance rather than merely identifying a monetary amount. You could search Equity for the relevant remedy, read an opinion and a classical discussion, then formulate a narrower question about the controlling jurisdiction. The useful product is a better understanding of the issue and a set of sources to investigate. It is not a conclusion that the remedy is available merely because a maxim or an older source sounds favorable.
The current page describes its Chancery holdings with a historical coverage date, so you can see the period the collection covers. The court descriptions and source counts are orientation material for choosing what to read. Equity is best used for targeted reading, vocabulary, doctrine development, and identifying potentially useful authorities. For a current matter, follow that reading with jurisdiction-specific source research and the actual facts and procedural setting.
When taking notes, identify whether a quotation comes from an opinion, a treatise, or the page’s introductory explanation. Keeping those categories visible helps prevent a memorable summary from being cited later as though it were language from the court that decided the relevant case.