Scholarship on criminal law and public law rarely considers the relation between these two fields. This book, featuring contributions from a number of leading practitioners and academics, seeks to redress this gap in the scholarship, and by doing so develop a richer understanding of each of the fields of criminal law and public law.

The book explores its subjects by both overview chapters and granular case studies of the points of overlap, intersection and inconsistency between public and criminal law. The collection is divided into three parts, from the general to the particular. Part I contains an introductory or overview chapter and then three chapters on the constitutional dimensions to the subject. Part II focuses on various institutions in the practice of criminal and public law, including prosecutors and anti-corruption commissions. Part III looks at some current and evolving issues in this area intersecting with human rights, including racial discrimination, whistleblowing and public protest.

The chapters in the collection remind the reader that there are live disputes about the boundaries of each of the fields of criminal and public law. Rather than being completely distinct fields, a number of the contributors reveal doctrinal overlap between criminal and public law. In other cases, the norms of public law in some sense ‘trump’ those of criminal law, bringing them into inconsistency. In yet other cases, there are obvious intersections between criminal and public law, although each remains distinct. The book includes a foreword by the Hon Geoffrey Nettle AC KC.