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