Equity

Equity on the University of Cambridge Law Tripos (Part II). The body of principles that supplements the common law — above all the trust, the most important contribution of English law to private-law thinking.

The nature of equity and the trust

Equity begins as conscience, but the trust makes that conscience institutionally powerful.

39 min

The three certainties

A trust fails unless intention, property, and objects are sufficiently certain.

42 min

Constitution of trusts

When equity treats intention as property, and when it leaves the volunteer empty-handed.

34 min

Resulting trusts

Resulting trusts test whether equity follows money, intention, failure, or conscience.

36 min

Constructive trusts — common intention and the family home

Family-home constructive trusts reveal equity’s uneasy movement from bargain to relationship.

36 min

Proprietary estoppel

Equity’s most discretionary property doctrine tests the boundary between promise, reliance, and conscience.

32 min

Charitable trusts

Charitable status turns private trusts into public institutions, but only on disciplined public-benefit terms.

36 min

Non-charitable purpose trusts

Purpose trusts expose the hardest boundary between enforceable obligation and mere testamentary aspiration.

36 min

Trustees' duties — loyalty, care, investment

Trusteeship is controlled by loyalty, disciplined by care, and tested most sharply through investment.

31 min

Trustees' powers and the beneficiary principle

Private trusts require accountable powers, ascertainable objects, and beneficiaries able to police administration.

36 min

Variation of trusts

Variation exposes the tension between settlor autonomy, beneficiary consent, and judicially controlled beneficial rearrangement.

34 min

Breach of trust and equitable compensation

Equitable compensation restores the trust estate, but only for loss legally attributable to the breach.

42 min

Tracing and knowing receipt

Tracing identifies value; knowing receipt decides when retention of that value is equitable wrongdoing.

36 min

Dishonest assistance

Accessory liability tests the conscience of third parties who help trustees misapply trust property.

39 min

Fiduciary relationships outside trust

Fiduciary law polices loyalty where one person undertakes to act for another outside trusteeship.

34 min