Extending public law: Digital engagement, education and academic identity: Digital engagement, education and academic identity

In Australian legal education, ‘public law’ is understood as an umbrella concept, covering both constitutional and administrative law subjects. More expansively, public law is understood as the analysis and evaluation of the state structures of power and control between governments and their people, and between governments, at both the formal and substantive levels. Thus ‘public law’ readily accommodates topics such as statutory construction, human rights, state sovereignty, electoral law, legal philosophy, and the rule of law. While increasingly observation is made of the weakening of the traditional distinction between public and private law, that is probably a discussion best ventilated elsewhere. For current purposes, the traditional distinction is a useful point of departure for a more expansive view of public law and public law teaching – an idea that we seek to develop here.