A completely different History. Equity, Law and Literature

The recently published volume The Concept of Equity. An Interdisciplinary Assessment (Universitatsverlag Winter, Heidelberg, 2007), edited by Daniela Carpi, is a good example of the Law and literature approach in the studies of English literature. However, this approach calls for further assessment in three particular problem areas, which this paper attempts to address. It first has to be pointed out, that literary criticism is essentially foreign to the theory of law, even though some parallels do exist, when both fields are viewed historically. The second problem is the understanding of equity itself: it calls for differentiation between external equity, which can be viewed as an alternative to common law, and internal equity, which is an in independent factor of fairness, even though external equity - as shown in the case of English literature - often becomes internal in relation to the law. The third topic is the possibility of a different story of equity: the one that is not based on the opposition between good equity and bad law, but confronts the concepts of bad equity the good law.