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Roman law experienced concerns about arbitrary decision-making by Praetors. English equity being much more recent, we have much better evidence both for actual arbitrary decision-making by Chancellors, and for concerns about arbitrary decision-making by Chancellors. The remedies adopted, however, are profoundly different. The Romans made the Edict more like the Twelve Tables - a code. The development of English law, in contrast, made equity more like the common law: a system based on the communis opinio of a narrow group of advocates (in the case of modern Chancery equity, the specialist Chancery bar), expressed in the heavy use of precedent and case reporting, modified by particularistic statutes, and governed by collegiate courts of review or (in modern times) appeal. The eventual upshot is that modern ‘Chancery bar equity’ is perhaps the least ‘equitable’, in the Aristotelian ἐπιείκεια sense of ‘flexible’, branch of English law.

‘Sham’ is a late 17th century slang expression which passed into legal usage in the 1690s, first becoming a term of art in the contexts of ‘sham pleas’, and a bit later in that of ‘sham bidders’ at auction. Beyond these contexts it is not apparent that it had become a term of art before the 1850s, though there is some evidence of restrictive interpretation at that period and down to 1875. The related doctrines, which were very extensive and hence can be discussed only very briefly, are the late medieval doctrine of ‘colour’ in pleading, and its offshoot, the description of actions and transactions some of which might have been called ‘shams’ as ‘merely colourable’; ‘fraudulent conveyances’ of goods under Statute 3 Hen. VII c. 4 (1487), and of land under the Elizabethan statutes 13 Eliz. I c. 5 (1571) and 27 Eliz. I c. 4 (1585), ‘fraud apparent’ as an expression for avoidance schemes in revenue and regulatory contexts, and ‘fraud on the law' (fraus legis) [e.g. ‘fraud on the bankrupt laws’] . An example of an unrelated doctrine which, however, also produces the result that transactions are not what they seem to be, is the old property law dogma that a licence to occupy land (not consistent with the licensor remaining in occupation) is ipso facto a lease. This dogma was established in the late 15th century, apparently on numerus clausus grounds, and continuously accepted until the early 20th. Its entanglement with ‘sham’ in Street v Mountford and AG Securities v Vaughan appears to be the result of counsel and judges in those cases not appreciating the age or the scope of the doctrine on the basis of the very summary use in Glenwood Lumber v Phillips.

Though commonly cited in modern equity books, Lord Nottingham's decision in Coke v Fountaine was only reported by Lord Nottingham himself and was not cited until Swanston printed Lord Nottingham's report in 1827 - though other aspects of the litigation were reported and cited. This chapter examines why this was the case, working through the background to the litigation and its complex multiple character, concluding that Lord Nottingham's decision 'turned on its own facts,' and in so far as it was worth citing, was obscured by the passage in the following year of the Statute of Frauds.

DOI: 10.1080/03017605.2011.537453

The article argues that the 'unlawfulness' of industrial action at common law is the product of judicial bias; and that there are institutional reasons in the structure of the legal system to suggest that such bias is ongoing and will be applied to any legislative framework