Enforcement Rights in Public and Private Law: Paradigms, Exceptions and Hybrids

Tracing the historical development of both past and contemporary law enforcement systems, Enforcement Rights in Public and Private Law provides a critical analysis of the distribution of enforcement rights across public and private law.

The contemporary dominant paradigm of law enforcement suggests that public law is enforced by public agents and protects public interests, and that private law is enforced by private agents and protects private interests. Challenging this simple narrative, this book contends with the curious persistence of exceptions to the normal rules, whereby private parties take part in public law actions, or public or quasi-public actors take part in private law proceedings. It also examines hybrid enforcement systems, in which a single private or public enforcer combines protection for both public and private interests in a single legal proceeding.

Through a wide-ranging study of examples from the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States, Kit Barker develops a theoretical framework for understanding the paradigms, exceptions and hybridities in modern enforcement systems. Attentive to the historical precedent of legal systems like Roman Law-which predate the evolution of modern categories of public and private law-the book presents sophisticated models of modern enforcement paradigms, drawing out the complex overlaps and connections between private and public laws, remedies, values and enforcement techniques.

Enforcement Rights in Public and Private Law assesses enforcement practices across a diverse range of contemporary legal fields, highlights key design challenges facing enforcement systems in the twenty-first century, and presents key improvements to these paradigms.

Kit Barker, Professor, TC Beirne School of Law, The University of Queensland

Kit Barker is a professor of law and the current director of the Australian Centre of Private Law at the University of Queensland, where he has worked since moving from the United Kingdom in 2006. His published works focus on the theory and doctrine of private law (particularly the law of torts and unjust enrichment law) and - increasingly over the last decade - on the complex overlaps and connections between private and public laws, remedies, values and enforcement techniques. He is assistant editor of the Torts Law Journal and a fellow of the Australian Academy of Law.