The Supreme Court has had many cases on equity over the last three decades, but it is Grupo Mexicano that is perhaps the leading case to connect the equity jurisdiction of the federal courts to the historic jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery. In a forthcoming article called "Debs and the Federal Equity Jurisdiction," Professor Aditya Bamzai and I include a footnote that shows that Grupo Mexicano is not an outlier.
In the text, we say:
As the Supreme Court has consistently understood, this statutory authorization to adjudicate equity cases was linked to the equitable jurisdiction of the English Court of Chancery in 1789. Writing in 1928, then-Professor (and future Judge) Armistead Dobie explained that "[s]ubstantially . . . the equity jurisdiction of the federal courts is the jurisdiction in equity exercised by the High Court of Chancery in England at the time of the adoption of the Constitution and the enactment of the original Judiciary Act, 1789." The modern statement of this proposition is found in the Court's decision in Grupo Mexicano, but many other cases both before and after Grupo Mexicano link section 11 of the First Judiciary Act with the English Court of Chancery's jurisdiction.
