Summary of Civil and Public Law

Civil and public law have some differences. They have different categories, differences in procedure and some others.

The main difference in public and civil law is that civil law not concerns a cases where one of the parties is a country. Public law concerns disputes where one party is a citizen or a group of citizens and another party is a state or disputes where both parties are states. What is more, civil and public law have different categories. For example, civil law has these categories: contracts, torts, probate and family law. And public law has these categories: crimes, constitutional law and international law. Moreover, there are some distinctions between civil and criminal procedures. For example, a defendant can be forced to pay a fine as a punishment by a criminal court and the victim pursues his claim for compencation but only in a civil and not in a criminal action. What is more, a civil action has lawer standards of proof than in a criminal action. Another one difference is that criminal action always is started by the state and criminal prosecution is started by the citizens. There is also a difference of the names. Prosecution is a party who brings criminal action and plaintiff is a party who brings only a civil action. Furthermore, there are some points of contact in these laws. For example, if you are avoiding to pay a fine, you can be punished by a criminal penalty.

Summing it up, we can see that there are many differences between civil and public law.