Equity Will Not Suffer A Wrong To Be Without A Remedy
When seeking an equitable relief, the one that has been wronged has the stronger hand. The stronger hand is the one that has the capacity to ask for a legal remedy (judicial relief). In equity, this form of remedy is usually one of specific performance or an injunction (injunctive relief). These are superior remedies to those administered at common law such as damages. The Latin legal maxim is ubi jus ibi remedium ("where there is a right, there must be a remedy"), sometimes cited as ubi jus ibi remediam.
The maxim is necessarily subordinate to positive principles and cannot be applied either to subvert established rules of law or to give the courts a jurisdiction hitherto unknown, and it is only in a general not in a literal sense that the maxim has force.
Case law dealing with principle of this maxim at law include Ashby v White (1703) 92 ER 126 and Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, 403 U.S. 388 (1971). The application of this principle at law was key in the decision of Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803) wherein it was necessary to establish that Marbury had a right to his commission in the first place in order for Chief Justice Marshall to make his more wide-ranging decision.
Read more about this topic: Maxims Of Equity
Famous quotes containing the words equity, suffer, wrong and/or remedy:
“If equity and human natural reason were allowed there would be no law, there would be no lawyers.”
—Christina Stead (1902–1983)
“The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.”
—Plato (428–347 B.C.)
“Institutions—government, churches, industries, and the like—have properly no other function than to contribute to human freedom; and in so far as they fail, on the whole, to perform this function, they are wrong and need reconstruction.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)
“Since long I’ve held silence a remedy for harm.”
—Aeschylus (525–456 B.C.)