TRUST AND FIDUCIARY DUTY IN THE
EARLY COMMON LAW
DAVID J. SEIPP∗
INTRODUCTION 10ll
I. RIGOR OF THE COMMON LAW 1012
II. THE MEDIEVAL USE 1014
III. ENFORCEMENT OF USES OUTSIDE THE COMMON LAW 1016
IV. ATTENTION TO USES IN THE COMMON LAW 1018
V. COMMON LAW JUDGES AND LAWYERS IN CHANCERY 1022
VI. FINDING TRUST IN THE EARLY COMMON LAW 1024
VII. THE ATTACK ON USES 1028
VIII. FINDING FIDUCIARY DUTIES IN THE EARLY COMMON LAW 1034
CONCLUSION 1036
INTRODUCTION
Trust is an expectation that others will act in one's own interest. Trust also has a specialized meaning in Anglo-American law, denoting an arrangement by which land or other property is managed by one party, a trustee, on behalf of another party, a beneficiary.
∗ Professor of Law and Law Alumni Scholar, Boston University School of Law. The
Author's citations to early English law reports, known as the Year Books, depart from the
Uniform System of Citation and conform to the author's comprehensive database of the
Year Books, searchable at www.bu.edu/law/seipp.
Trusts were enforced by chancery, a court of equity, not by courts of common law. Fiduciary duties and the law of trusts thus seemed to have grown up outside the common law, in a different court that developed later than the common law courts and was sometimes regarded as their adversary or rival. Because the common law did not enforce the trusts nor their predecessors, calle…