Public and Private Law

Abstract

This is a survey of the debates concerning public and private law. It provides a link between two debates which are typically conducted separately from each other: the debates concerning the autonomy of private law and the use of private law to promote public ends on the one hand and the debate concerning privatization on the other hand. It shows that there are strong links between these debates and it also defends the view that there are principled (rather than merely contingent) reasons to maintain the autonomy of public law and to provide certain goods publicly.

Keywords: public law, private law, jurisprudence, corrective justice, liberalism, feminism, legal realism, privatization, formalism, Marxism formalism