Understanding Public and Private Law: Major Branches and Functions

1. How would you characterize public and private law?

Public law deals with issues that affect the general public or state, society as a whole. Including Administrative law, Constitutional laws, Criminal laws, Municipal laws and International laws.

On the other hand, private law affects the rights and obligations of individuals, families, businesses and small groups and exists to assist citizens in disputes that involve private matters, which includes Contract law, Tort law - rights, obligations and remedies provided to someone who has been wronged by another individual, Property law, Succession law - governs the transfer of an estate between parties And Family law.

2. Which are the major branches of private law?

Private law deals with the mutual relations between citizens. Both property law and contract law are major branches of private law, which regulates things such as sales, ownership, and mortgages.

3. What do those branches (N. 2) regulate (deal with)?

Property law - governs forms of property ownership, transfer and tenant issues Contract law - governs the rights and obligations of those entering into contracts

4. Which are the major branches of public law?

• Criminal Law
• Constitutional Law
• Administrative Law
• Municipal Law
• International law

5. What do those branches (N. 4) regulate (deal with)?

• Administrative law - laws that govern government agencies, like the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
• Constitutional laws are laws that protect citizens' rights as afforded in the Constitution
• Criminal laws are laws that relate to crime
• Municipal laws are ordinances, regulations and by-laws that govern a city or town
• International laws are laws that oversee relations between nations

6. What characterizes procedural law?

It’s the law of governing the machinery of the courts and the methods by which both the state and the individual enforce their rights in the several courts. Procedural law prescribes the means of enforcing rights or providing redress of wrongs and comprises rules about jurisdiction, pleading and practice, evidence, appeal, execution of judgments, representation of counsel, costs, and other matters

7. What are “functional fields of law”?

Laws that are in many fields of law that have traits of both private and public law and/or both substantive and procedural law, characterized by the function they fulfill rather than by belonging to one of the main areas of law. The function then consists mainly of the topic that is regulated by the field, such as the environment (environmental law) or information and communication technology (ICT law).

8. Which are the functions of legal rules?

Most legal rules do not prescribe behavior. Earlier we already mentioned rules that give definitions and rules that create competences. Still other rules create rights, describe procedures, bring institutions to life, and probably do much more.

9. What kind of legal subjects do you know?

• Natural and legal persons, Legal rules impose duties upon, and assign competences and rights to, legal subjects. These legal subjects are typically human beings, but in theory the law can give the status of a legal subject to anyone or anything it wants.
• In public law, natural persons are protected by the human rights that are assigned to them.
• In private law, important consequences of being a legal subject are that one can have rights, such as property or a claim to be paid money, and that one can perform juridical acts.

10. Who could be addressees of a duty?

Duties are meant to guide persons in their behavior. This means that duties are always addressed to one or more agents.

11. What is the content of a duty?

Every duty has a content, which indicates what the addressee of the duty is supposed to do. The action that a duty prescribes can both be doing something and abstaining from doing something.

12. What is an implicit permission?

Permissions come in two forms. Often permission is nothing more than the absence of a prohibition.