Courts of equity

A court of equity, equity court or chancery court is a court that is authorized to apply principles of equity, as opposed to law, to cases brought before it.

These courts began with petitions to the Lord Chancellor of England. Equity courts "handled lawsuits and petitions requesting remedies other than damages, such as writs, injunctions, and specific performance". Most were eventually "merged with courts of law".

Some states in the early republic of the United States followed the English tradition of maintaining separate courts for law and equity. Others, however, vested their courts with both types of jurisdiction, as Congress did with respect to the federal courts.

United States bankruptcy courts are the one example of US federal courts which operate as courts of equity. Some common law jurisdictions—such as the U.S. states of Delaware, Mississippi, New Jersey, South Carolina, and Tennessee—preserve the distinctions between law and equity and between courts of law and courts of equity.

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