The Commonwealth system is based on the "will of the people". It operates on three levels. The hierarchy is as follows: EQUITY JURISDICTION Coming from "good conscience and good reason", the Equity jurisdiction has three levels:- - Exclusive: Deals only with Trusts, especially the rights, titles, interests and estates of beneficiaries. - Concurrent: deals with matters that have both 'legal' and 'equitable' rights, titles and interests. - Auxiliary: deals with matters mainly of a legal status but there may be "equities" present as well (that is, beneficial rights but not necessarily of a Trust). . LAW - The English Common Law. - Based on the "will of the people", it deals with matters between living men and women. . STATUTES Created by government but must be "in accordance with the law" (Common Law) and is "given the force of law". Statues deals only with legal, commercial, and contractual matters. . Each jurisdiction is subordinate to the one above it. . Two of my favourite quotes: . "Law is nothing without equity, and equity is everything, even without law. Those who perceive what is just and what is unjust only through the eyes of the law, never see it as well as those who behold it with the eyes of equity. Law may be looked upon, in some manner, as an assistance for those who have a weak perception of right and wrong, in the same way that optical glasses are useful to those who are short sighted, or whose visual organs are deficient. Equity, in it's true and genuine meaning, is the soul and spirit of the law; positive law is construed, and rational law is made by it." John Bouvier (1787 - 1851), Institutes of American Law (1854), Vol IV, Pg. 100. archive.org/details/institutesameri00bouvgoog/page… . Definition of "equity": § 58. Equity Enforces What Good Reason and Good Conscience Require. Whatever good reason and good conscience require a party to do or refrain from, in a matter affecting another's property or rights, that a Court of Chancery requires of him, unless the other party has forfeited his right to relief by his negligence or participation in the wrong done. Conscience itself might make too refined or too unstable a standard for the determination of human conduct in the Courts; and reason of itself might give too wide a range for sharp practices in matters of trade, or other dealings. Indeed, conscience without reason might degenerate into fanaticism, or gross eccentricity; and, on the other hand, reason without conscience might become trickery, or even downright knavery. Hence, in the administration of justice, conscience must be conformed to reason and thus become good conscience, and reason must be conformed to conscience and thus become good reason; and whatever good conscience and good reason unite in approving is the nearest approach to perfect justice man is able to attain. This union of good reason and good conscience is what in a general way is meant by the term Equity in the administration of justice." Source: Gibson’s Suits in Chancery, (1907); Sec.58, Pg.48. archive.org/details/cu31924084259872/page/n73 . Equity is superior to the "law": Judicature Act 1876 (Commonwealth) 40 Vic. No.6: An Act to provide for the Administration of a Uniform System of Law in all Courts of Justice and to Simplify and Amend the Practice of the Supreme Court. [Assented to 9 October 1876] . 5. (11) Rules of Equity to prevail where any conflict between them and rules of law. Generally in all matters not hereinbefore particularly mentioned in which 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.