Equity (Political Science)

A legal concept of fairness, found within common law jurisprudence and involving the use of equitable principles to remedy unjust results in common law.

King James VI of Scotland, later James I of England, founded the principle of equity in England and based it on his own written works, most notably The True Law of Free Monarchies, written in 1597. The True Law of Free Monarchies was both a justification of the monarch's absolute authority and a mandate of the king's duties to God to reign justly, maintaining just laws. However, he asserted that righteous laws may also contribute to the greatest wrongs, wherein lies the necessity for royal discretion undoing an injustice created by the strictest letters of the law but limited in extent so as not to give what is not justly deserved. For more information, see Fortier (1998).