Editing Common law (section)

=== 1870 through 20th century, and the procedural merger of law and equity ===
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As early as the 15th century, it became the practice that litigants who felt they had been cheated by the common law system would petition the King in person. For example, they might argue that an award of damages (at [[#Law as opposed to equity|common law (as opposed to equity)]]) was not sufficient redress for a trespasser occupying their land, and instead request that the trespasser be evicted. From this developed the system of [[Equity (law)|equity]], administered by the [[Lord Chancellor]], in the courts of [[Court of equity|chancery]]. By their nature, equity and law were frequently in conflict and litigation would frequently continue for years as one court countermanded the other,<ref>{{harvnb|Salmond|1907|p=34}}</ref> even though it was established by the 17th century that equity should prevail.

In England, courts of law (as opposed to equity) were merged with [[Court of equity|courts of equity]] by the [[Judicature Acts]] of 1873 and 1875, with equity prevailing in case of conflict.<ref>Lobban, Michael "Preparing for Fusion: Reforming the Nineteenth-Century Court of Chancery, Part II | year=2004 | work=Law and History Review, 2004 (University of Illinois Press) . {{ISSN|0738-2480}}.</ref>

In the United States, parallel systems of [[#Disambiguate equity|law]] (providing money [[damages]], with cases heard by a jury upon either party's request) and equity (fashioning a remedy to fit the situation, including injunctive relief, heard by a judge) survived well into the 20th century. The [[United States federal courts]] procedurally separated law and equity: the same judges could hear either kind of case, but a given case could only pursue causes in law or in equity, and the two kinds of cases proceeded under different procedural rules. This became problematic when a given case required both money damages and injunctive relief. In 1937, the new [[Federal Rules of Civil Procedure]] combined [[#Disambiguate equity|law]] and equity into one form of action, the "civil action". Fed.R.Civ.P. {{frcp|2}}. The distinction survives to the extent that issues that were "common law (as opposed to equity)" as of 1791 (the date of adoption of the [[Seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution|Seventh Amendment]]) are still subject to the right of either party to request a jury, and "equity" issues are decided by a judge.<ref>E.g., ''Markman v. Westview Instruments, Inc.'', 517 U.S. 370, 376 (1996) ("[W]e [the U.S. Supreme Court] have understood that the right of trial by jury thus preserved is the right which existed under the English [[#Disambiguate equity|common law (as opposed to equity)]] when the Amendment was adopted. In keeping with our longstanding adherence to this 'historical test', we ask, first, whether we are dealing with a cause of action that either was tried at [[#Disambiguate equity|law (as opposed to equity)]] at the time of the founding or is at least analogous to one that was. If the action in question belongs in the law category, we then ask whether the particular trial decision must fall to the jury in order to preserve the substance of the common-law right as it existed in 1791." (citations and quotations omitted, holding that interpretation of the scope of a patent had no analogy in 1790, and is thus a question to be decided by a judge, not a jury)</ref>

The states of Delaware, Illinois, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee continue to have divided courts of law and courts of chancery, for example, the [[Delaware Court of Chancery]]. In New Jersey, the appellate courts are unified, but the trial courts are organized into a Chancery Division and a Law Division.