Equity developed an armory of personal remedies, such as specific performance and injunctions, directed at the person of the defendant. Their principal function is to enforce personal rights, such as performance of a contract. However, over time equity proved willing to award personal relief almost routinely, not only against owners of property but also against third parties who had received the property. This regular award of equitable personal relief was eventually perceived as having created a proprietary interest in favour of the party entitled to the relief. For example, if A signs a contract to purchase land from B, but B refuses to complete the contract, equity will grant the remedy of specific performance against B, and B will have to transfer the land to A. This happened so routinely that eventually A was treated in equity as if he held a property interest in the land once the contract was signed. Similarly, the regular awards of personal relief against trustees in breach of trust eventually gave rise to a proprietary interest in the beneficiary. All equitable property rights are sourced in a personal obligation enforced in equity.

A constructive trust is imposed by operation of law when it would be inequitable, by reference to established equitable principles, for the defendant to deny the obligations of trusteeship. The award of a constructive trust usually involves the court ordering the defendant to hold property to which he has title on trust for the plaintiff. But, in some situations, the constructive trust is awarded as a personal remedy; the defendant is held accountable as if he were a trustee. Someone who knowingly assists a trustee or other fiduciary to commit a breach of duty will be accountable as a constructive trustee. As constructive trustee, he must account to the beneficiary for loss caused by the breach. The constructive trust is an ‘as if’ trust – the defendant is treated by equity as if he were an express trustee, even though he is not. The trustee legislation of all States and Territories defines the words ‘trust’ and ‘trustee’ to include a constructive trust and constructive trustee, unless the context otherwise requires. This means that constructive trustees can exercise the statutory powers contained in the legislation.

Tracing is not a remedy. It is the process of identifying a new asset as the substitute for the old. Its relevance to equity and trusts can be illustrated by the following example. Suppose a trustee misappropriates $10 000 and pays it into his personal account, which had previously been $20 000 in credit. He later withdraws $25 000 to buy a car. Tracing enables the beneficiaries to identify how the chose in action representing the trust money came to be substituted by a car. The tracing rules also determine how much of the beneficiaries’ money remains in the trustee’s bank account and how much is represented by an interest in the car. What is traced is not the trust property. The beneficiaries’ equitable title to the money will be lost once the car has been bought. It is the value of the beneficiaries’ property in the hand of a recipient that is traced. Tracing is distinguishable from following and claiming.

The equitable obligation of confidence is used to protect information from unauthorised misuse or exploitation by others. The action now has two significant aspects; it is traditionally used to protect commercially valuable information such as trade secrets, and it is increasingly used to protect personally private information. Whether the same considerations apply to these two aspects of the action is an open question. Though the obligation of confidence is one of the oldest in equitable jurisdiction, it has only recently been called upon to protect interests previously thought to be ineffectively protected. The long hiatus between the action’s origins and its current development is partly due to the unusual position confidentiality has occupied. Whereas many equitable responsibilities, such as trust or fiduciary obligations, have no direct common law counterparts, confidentiality can be regulated by regimes other than equity. Up until the mid-twentieth century most cases concerning the equitable obligation of confidence also involved a breach of an obligation of confidence not sourced in equity

Enforceability of an express trust depends on proof of certainty in three matters: intention to create a trust, subject-matter, and objects. In addition to satisfying the certainty requirements and not infringing public policy prohibitions on creating trusts, an express trust must have been validly created (or constituted). That is, the trust must be properly declared, and title to the trust property must be properly vested in the trustee. Additionally, some trusts must comply with statutory formalities. Unless they meet these requirements they will be unenforceable or void, depending on the statutory provision in question.

Equity closely scrutinises relationships in which one party places trust and confidence in another. There are many examples of trust in human interaction, but equity cannot grant relief against every breach of trust and confidence, any more than contract law can enforce all promises. Only some trusting relationships and some obligations of confidence are protected. The relationships which equity protects are known as ‘fiduciary relationships’. A relationship of trust and confidence will be recognised as fiduciary where it arises from F (fiduciary) undertaking to act in the interests of B (beneficiary) in a matter which confers a discretion on F, and in respect of which the exercise of discretion affects B’s economic interests. B may hand over property to F, such as an investor handing over money to an investment adviser. A settlor may hand property to F to hold on trust for B. Alternatively, B may entrust F with the task of negotiating a contract on behalf of B so that F is B’s agent. Or F may be entrusted with the task of obtaining information on behalf of B which will enable B to exploit a commercial opportunity. This is also an example of agency.

Both equity and trustee legislation confer rights on trustees which enable them to perform their obligations effectively and protect them from some of the more onerous aspects of the responsibilities of trusteeship. Only selected rights are covered in this chapter, the most important of which is the trustee’s right of indemnity. The trustee’s most significant liability is for breach of trust; however, the trustee is also liable at law to incur the expenses of the trust. This liability gives rise to the trustee’s right of indemnity. The trustee’s exposure to liability must therefore be understood before his or her rights can be considered.

Students tend to approach the law of charitable trusts with a sense of relief. After the fairly dry and technical case law of private trusts, the eccentricities of numerous testamentary trusts created for charitable purposes provide some colour. Despite the colour provided by facts in cases, the law with respect to charitable trusts deserves deeper consideration. The charities and not-for-profit sector is now a major component on the Australian economy. Philanthropy and the effective control of charitable organisations raise important policy considerations. Regulation of charitable trusts is a problematic area, in part due to the Australian federal system. Potential charitable trusts are validated (or invalidated) according to the general law as administered by State Courts and local statute. Additionally, the Commonwealth regulates many financial aspects of the charities and not-for-profit sector. The focus of this chapter will be upon the establishment of trusts for valid charitable purposes, rather than their later regulation.

All dispositions that are intended to transfer property, such as contracts, gifts, trusts and wills, must be clearly defined if they are to be legally effective. In the event of a dispute, a court may have to ascertain whether the property owner intended to dispose of her property and, if so, on what terms. In some cases, the court may have to determine the identity, or identities, of the recipients of the property, or the quantum of property transferred. A recipient of property will need to know if the transfer constitutes a gift, a loan or a trust. All trusts, whether or not they also have to satisfy writing requirements, must be sufficiently certain in order to be enforceable. The certainty requirements for trusts are more demanding than for contracts because trusts can affect the rights of parties who did not agree to, or participate in, its creation. These parties may include the beneficiaries and third parties who do business with the trustee.

Scheme combines power and simplicity. Scheme is derived from Lisp, which John McCarthy developed—inspired in part by Alonzo Church’s work on the λ-calculus—while exploring ideas about computability, recursive functions, and models of computation. McCarthy intended Lisp for computing with symbolic data he called S-expressions. S-expressions are based on lists, and the name “Lisp” was formed from “list processing.” Lisp programs can be concise and natural programs, and they often resemble mathematical definitions of the functions they compute. Lisp has been used heavily in artificial intelligence for over fifty years, and in 1971, McCarthy received ACM’s Turing Award for contributions to artificial intelligence.

This chapter introduces the reader to the economic conditions and challenges of citizens who live in Russia outside metropolitan areas, regional capitals, or rich oil- and gas-producing regions. In the Soviet era, life in villages and small towns was organized around large and often powerful state-run factories and collective farms, which were responsible for providing many public services. The privatization of these enterprises left towns and villages uncertain not only about jobs, but also about who would take over the provision of basic services and duties. As the 1990s wrought havoc on local economies, Russian citizens in these smaller towns and villages sought ways to survive. They tried to rely on subsistence farming and occasional local incomes, and to find new ways to make a living as entrepreneurs or farmers. They worked without salaries to keep their jobs or took advantage of opportunities for labor migration to more prosperous places in Russia.