What Law Forgot

Equity — the conscience of the law. It opens on a quarrel where only the lawyers are smiling, and states its theme in the title poem: law without conscience is not justice; equity mends what law forgot. The first verses are law as it is — cobwebs that catch the small flies, the table you pound when the law won’t help you. Then the bench: the judge as a water level, the verdict no one quite believes. At its center is a litany of the maxims of equity, one to a poem, read almost like a catechism. It closes with a caution and a key: to find equity, you must first have given it to somebody else.