7/25/2023 0 Comments Everyone should be equal synonymThis use led to our modern meanings of “the value of a piece of property after any debts that remain to be paid are subtracted,” (also the basis of a home equity loan) as well as the meaning “a share in a company” or “a share of the company’s stock.” Indeed, in finance, the term equities is essentially synonymous with stocks. This is another of many apparently redundant pairs in the rhetoric of the Constitution, common in the legal language of the time, including “rules and regulations,” “salaries and emoluments,” and “crimes and misdemeanors.” Relationship to Property, Shares, and StocksĪ more familiar use of equity that connects more to ideas of “due proportion” or “balance” begins with a legal designation that was originally called equity of redemption Noah Webster, himself a lawyer, included this meaning in his 1828 dictionary:Įquity of redemption, in law, the advantage, allowed to a mortgager, of a reasonable time to redeem lands mortgaged, when the estate is of greater value than the sum for which it was mortgaged. The Judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution Constitution, which was written in the context of the British legal system, equity is mentioned alongside law in the first sentence of Article III, Section 2: It is for this reason that, in the language of the U.S. These courts later blended with the legal court system in the late 1800s. This idea of “justice” connects equity more directly with the law as well: in early modern England there was an institution known as an “equity court” that had the power to rule on cases for which there was no adequate remedy in written law, seeking “natural justice” that could then be taken as precedent. Then shalt thou understand righteousness, and judgment, and equity yea, every good path. It came from the French derivative of aequitas, equité, a word that has clear legal connotations in French it means “justice” or “rightness,” and those meanings, plus a splash of “fairness,” have come down to us in the English word as well.Ī connection with justice is obvious in this sentence from the book of Proverbs in the King James Bible: Equity is the older word in English, appearing in the 1300s, and it also has a broader range of meanings.
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