English law
Common law is a term with historical origins in the legal system of England. It denotes, in the first place, the judge-made law that developed from the early Middle Ages as described in a work published at the end of the 19th century, "The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I", in which Pollock and Maitland expanded the work of Coke (17th century) and Blackstone (18th century). Specifically, the law developed in England's Court of Common Pleas and other common law courts, which became also the law of the colonies settled initially under the crown of England or, later, of the United Kingdom, in North America and elsewhere; and this law as further developed after those courts in England were reorganised by the Supreme Court of Judicature Acts passed in the 1870s, and developed independently, in the legal systems of the United States and other jurisdictions, after their independence from the United Kingdom, before and after the 1870s. The term is used, in the second place, to denote the law developed by those courts, in the same periods (pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial), as distinct from within the jurisdiction, or former jurisdiction, of other courts in England: the Court of Chancery, the ecclesiastical courts, and the Admiralty court.
Chancery Regulation Act 1862
From the 13th century in England and Wales, equity developed as a system of justice in parallel with and complementary to the common law. By the 19th century, with the rise of capitalism in Victorian Britain, equity had become very important. The remedies available to the common law were limited to damages and those disputes demanding an injunction or specific performance of a contract needed to be heard in equity which was administered in Courts of Chancery, separate from the common law courts. Moreover, procedure in equity was better able to handle complex disputes involving the relationship between several parties such as partnerships and trusts.