LEV438 "He will minister judgment to the peoples with equity." Psalm 9:9. Justice, by its very definition, must treat all people with equal impartiality, rich and poor, powerful and humble. The Bible explicitly prohibits favoring the poor or giving preference to the rich [this verse]. Yet equality before the law does not always meet the ends of justice. The loss of a small financial claim will not significantly affect a rich person but it may destroy a man in need. Universality of law precludes the kind of flexibility which allows for wide judicial discretion. This renders the law helpless to prevent occasional miscarriages of justice. To remedy the situation, courts of equity came into existence in medieval England. Equity judges gave liberal interpretations to the letter of the law in order to arrive at equitable decisions. However, even courts of equity were bound by legal principles which did not permit judges to entirely ignore the letter of the law. The layman's interpretation of equity, as it is widely understood in modern times, is not constrained by technicalities, as was the case when equity was part of the national juridical system. In common parlance equity is synonymous with fairness. The determining factor of fairness is ethics, not law. The burden of equity is the responsibility of all individuals in every walk of life. The standard of behavior of equitable people must be measured on the scale of fairness rather than legality. (Continued at [[DEUT584]] Deuteronomy 12:28 good BLOCH 113-4)