Is contract law public?

Private law includes civil law (such as contract law, liability law and property law), labor law, commercial law, company law, and competition law. Public law includes constitutional law, administrative law and criminal law. An agreement that opposes public policy or the law will be void. However, it is not possible to expressly prohibit the acts described in the contract.

The reason why it is difficult to define which contracts are contrary to public policy is that the application of public policy is carried out on a case-by-case basis. Private law refers to legal relationships between individuals. The main areas of private law are property law, contract law and liability law. More broadly speaking, in the context of common law jurisdictions, public law is inseparable from government.

Private law traditionally encompasses the customary law of contracts, torts and property that regulates relations between individuals, 3 In addition, in line with this distinction, and as more systematically established in the tradition of civil law, constitutional law, administrative law and criminal law fall within the scope of public law, 4 In summary, at the highest levels of abstraction, public law is the law that refers to the government, for example, the constitutional separation of powers or administrative procedure; or to the vertical relationship between government and individuals to the extent that the government imposes a obligation owed to individuals, for example, criminal law; or directly confers a right or right on the latter, for example, laws relating to the government provision of social assistance to the poor; or guarantees such an individual right or right, for example, constitutional right, both as an ordering self-control of government5 and which requires the positive government intervention necessary to defend individual rights, 6.Private law is the part of a civil law legal system that is part of the jus commune that involves relationships between individuals, such as the law of contracts and torts (since it is called in the common law) and the law of obligations (as it is called in civil legal systems). It must be distinguished from public law, which deals with relations between natural and artificial persons (that is, in general terms, private law involves interactions between individuals, while public law implies interrelations between the State and the population in general. The concept of private law in customary law countries is somewhat broader, since it also covers private relations between Governments and individuals or other entities. In other words, relations between governments and individuals based on contract or tort law are governed by private law and are not considered within the scope of public law.

Essentially, the difference between public law and private law is whether the act or acts affect society as a whole or if they are a problem between two or more people. Private law traditionally encompasses the customary law of contracts, torts and property that regulates relations between individuals. In both cases, the relevant contractual legal regime seems to be firmly rooted within the horizontal private law paradigm. Some acts are not expressly prohibited by law, but their nature is so malicious that they cannot be included in a legal contract.

Delia Simpson
Delia Simpson

Freelance beer fanatic. Award-winning tv nerd. Award-winning food expert. Amateur zombie guru. Devoted web evangelist.