Welcome to the Department of Public, Constitutional and International Law

This Department is responsible for a few very distinct areas of the law, namely constitutional law, public international law and indigenous law.

What is Public, Constitutional and International Law?

These two fields of study cover the areas of the law that are sometimes referred to as 'public law'. This indicates that the primary focus is on the relationship between the state and the individual (constitutional law) or between states themselves (international law). More specifically, constitutional law (in the wide sense) includes institutional constitutional law (the structures and powers of government), human rights law (or fundamental rights), the interpretation of statutes, and administrative law (the rules governing the state administration). There are also more specialised fields of study that are off-shoots of constitutional law (environmental law and security services law, for example). Secondly, public international law deals basically with legal relationships between politically independent states. Here, too, there are specialised fields such as international trade law, international human rights law, and so on.