I just came back on Sunday from the 2024 Law and Society Association Annual Meeting in Denver. It was, as always, a stimulating few days. A number of us business law profs were in attendance. The corporate and securities law collaborative research network (CRN46) habitually organizes several programs. This year was no exception. I was privileged to be featured in two. But I will say more on my participation in the conference later.
Today, I want to highlight an interesting piece that was presented at the conference during one of the CRN46 paper panels: “The Original Meaning of Equity “ by Asaf Raz (forthcoming in the Washington University Law Review). The SSRN abstract follows:
Equity is seeing a new wave of attention in scholarship and practice. Yet, as this Article argues, our current understanding of equity is divided between two distinct meanings: on one side, the federal courts, guided by the Supreme Court, tend to discuss equity as the precise set of remedies known at a fixed point in the past (static equity). On the other, state courts—most prominently, in Delaware—administer equity to preserve the correct operation of law in unforeseeable situations (substantive equity). Only the latter