The 23rd WA Lee Equity Lecture

Abstract

The underlying rationale for tracing in equity is a much-debated topic and has seemingly resulted in more theories than there are commentators. For a relatively minor area of the law, it has attracted substantially more than its fair share of attention from academic theorists, each of whom vie to include it as part of their particular speciality. They include the restitutionalists; those who regard tracing as an inherent right of property; those who regard it as underpinned by the Roman Law notion of obligatio;1 and those who regard it as the enforcement of fiduciary duties. The intense debate necessarily reflects a lack of jurisprudential consistency in the authorities and there are myriad doctrinally diverse cases from which academics can choose to support their respective theories.