I would like to clarify one statement that I made earlier, since it seems to have been misunderstood.

It appears that in Civil law, stemming from Roman law, the terms are used define (i) laws governing the activities of the state and the interaction between the state and the individual or private entity vs. laws governing the activities of individuals/private entities and their interaction with each other.

MM: That sounds _very similar_ to my statement that public law is legislation/court precedent, private law is contract. “Laws governing the activities of the state and the interaction between the state and the individual or private entity” sounds a lot like legislation and government regulation to me; “laws governing the activities of individuals/private entities and their interaction with each other” sounds a lot like contract.

GS: No, I was actually trying to say something quite different, and make a key distinction between the Civil Law concepts and the Common Law concepts (which Milton correctly stated). I was referring to laws passed by the state in both instances, not to party-made "law" in contracts (which are really "rules of engagement" and only "law" by analogy). I'll revise my sentence slightly:

It appears that in Civil law, stemming from Roman law, the terms
"public law" and "private law"
are used
to distinguish and
define
, respectively
(i) laws
created by the state
governing the activities of the state and the interaction between the state and the individual or private entity vs. laws
created by the state
governing the activities of individuals/private entities and their interaction with each other.
Thus, in Civil Law, public law and private law together make up the entire body of state-created law. By contrast, in Common Law usage, at least in the U.S., "public law" refers to the entire body of state-created law.

(As a side note, judge-made precedent generally does not have the binding effect in Civil Law that it does in Common Law, but that's not really relevant here.)

Moving on,

I think

the distinction between "private law" and "public law" creates confusion rather than clarity in this discussion. Perhaps it would be better to distinguish between "state actions" (i.e., disputes initiated by the state against a private party) and "private actions" (i.e., disputes initiated by one private party against another).

Greg