The Chancellor's Function

City of Columbus v. Mercantile Trust & Deposit Co. of Baltimore, 218 U.S. 645, 663 (1910): "In the case of Atty. Gen. v. Birmingham, the vice chancellor said: 'I am not sitting here as a committee of public safety, armed with arbitrary power to prevent what it is said will be a great injury not to Birmingham only, but to the whole of England; that is not my function.'"

Comments

[Martinned]

The case quoted is The Attorney-General v. The Council of the Borough of Birmingham (1858), 4 K. &. J. 528, 70 E.R. 220, holding that a city may not discharge raw sewage into a river, even if doing so serves the national interest. I’m not sure why it is referred to here, although I would like to point out that in England the Vice Chancellor is a regular judge - at the relevant time in the courts of equity - while the Chancellor is a politician, albeit one who was at the relevant time also a judge. Of course, after the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 the Chancellor no longer sits as a judge. The Vice Chancellor, however, is still a judge as he was before, presiding over the Chancery Division of the Court of King’s Bench.