CHAPTER 1
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THE IDEA OF PUBLIC LAW
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Introduction
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CHAPTER OVERVIEW
The public and the private
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Key concepts of public law
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Defining public law 2
The functions of public law: empowerment and constraint
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Contextualising public law: institutions, values and interests Our approach to public law
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Further reading 37
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Discussion questions 37
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INTRODUCTION
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We are alone in the world, making our own way; and we are part of various communities. Communities provide us with a collective understanding of the conditions for a good and meaningful life. They might also impose constraints on us as individuals that prevent us from attaining those conditions. Our lives are a complex combination of the individual and the collective. For First Nations societies, the rights of individuals are also underpinned by their collective cultural relationship to land, which spans millennia.1
In the modern world, the collective nature of our existence has grown in complexity—in the household; the neighbourhood; cultural, social and political organisations; subnational political communities such as those governed by local, state and territory governments; nation-states; and, globally, regional organisations such as the European Union or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and a body representing all nations (the United Nations).
1
Megan Davis, ‘A Reflection on the Limitations of the Right to Self-determination and Aboriginal Women’ (2011) 7(23) Indigenous Law Bulletin 6.
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
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