Aequitas sequitur legem,
Equity follows the law
This maxim, also expressed as Aequitas sequitur legem, means more fully that "equity will not allow a remedy that is contrary to law."
The Court of Chancery never claimed to override the courts of common law. Story states "where a rule, either of the common or the statute law is direct, and governs the case with all its circumstances, or the particular point, a court of equity is as much bound by it as a court of law, and can as little justify a departure from it."[19] According to Edmund Henry Turner Snell, “It is only when there is some important circumstance disregarded by the common law rules that equity interferes.”[20] Cardozo wrote in his dissent in Graf v. Hope Building Corporation, 254 N.Y 1 at 9 (1930), "Equity works as a supplement for law and does not supersede the prevailing law."
Maitland says, “We ought not to think of common law and equity as of two rival systems."[21] "Equity had come not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it. Every jot and every title of law was to be obeyed, but when all this had been done yet something might be needful, something that equity would require."[22]The goal of law and equity was the same but due to historical reasons they chose a different path. Equity respected every word of law and every right at law but where the law was defective, in those cases, equity provides equitable right and remedies.
In modern-day England and Wales, this maxim no longer applies; as per section 49(1) of the Senior Courts Act 1981, the law follows equity instead:
Subject to the provisions of this or any other Act, every court exercising jurisdiction in England or Wales in any civil cause or matter shall continue to administer law and equity on the basis that, wherever there is any conflict or variance between the rules of equity and the rules of the common law with reference to the same matter, the rules of equity shall prevail.[23]