From Public Law to Public Policy, or The “Public” in “Public Law”

In a self-consciously forward looking survey recently published inPS, Glendon Schubert continues to employ the phrase “public law” as roughly synonymous with the legal concerns of political science. The recent publication of Murphy and Tanenhaus'The Study of Public Lawalso reaffirms that, in spite of the movement toward “judicial behavior,” which it might have been anticipated would change the boundaries of the field, the “public” in public law is still very much with those political scientists particularly concerned with things legal. There does not seem to me to be any valid reason why political scientists should maintain the public law—private law distinction and then proceed to exclude themselves from the “private” law sphere.