Conference on Reasoning about Equity and Law

1st Edition of the 'Harvard-Hamburg Conferences on New Approaches to Legal Reasoning' 

In one way or another, equity has been associated with certain styles of reasoning through long periods of history and across a wide variety of legal systems. What is this style of reasoning? Is it mere discretion or the crafting of exceptions? Is it a matter of standards or principles rather than rules? Does it reflect some special kind of morality or appeal to conscience not found in other parts of the law? Or is its essence more structural, in that it involves defeasibility or operation from outside the regular law? All of these questions are relevant to the role equity plays – and should play – in the legal system. Equity has at various times been seen as contradicting, supplementing, and fulfilling the law. Each of these roles might correspond to a different type of reasoning.

Whether there is a special kind of equitable function that comes with its own kind of reasoning or even logic is complicated by the diversity of doctrines and institutions that are said to implement equity (whatever that is). Many common law jurisdictions once had (and a few still do have) separate courts of equity, and large parts of the law in such jurisdictions are still denominated “equitable”. In contrast, civilian jurisdictions mostly never had separate courts of equity, yet they do feature doctrines of good faith and abuse of right that closely resemble common law equity in many ways, including in their mode of reasoning.

This conference will bring together scholars from multiple disciplines and legal cultures to address the kind of reasoning associated with equity and how it should be implemented institutionally. The goal will be both to get a handle on the role equity plays in the law and through an exploration of equity to identify different modes of reasoning. Emphasis will be placed on bringing new tools – new logics, new models, new disciplinary perspectives – to bear on the time-honored questions of equitable reasoning. and how it should be implemented institutionally. The goal will be both to get a handle on the role equity plays in the law and through an exploration of equity to identify different modes of reasoning. Emphasis will be placed on bringing new tools – new logics, new models, new disciplinary perspectives – to bear on the time-honored questions of equitable reasoning.

Hosts:
Prof. Dr. Matthias Armgardt, Universität Hamburg
Prof. Dr. Scott Brewer, Harvard Law School
Prof. Dr. Henry E. Smith, Harvard Law School