Post by John Goldberg and Henry Smith.
Steve Bainbridge’s reaction—“WTF is ‘private law’?”—is understandable. It shows why the “New Private Law” is new! Along with Matt Bodie, he asks why areas like corporate law are not part of private law. The short answer is that they are, up to a point. Corporate law, family law, and other topics are at least partly matters of private law, though they also have public-law dimensions. Perhaps more to the point, corporate law, family law, and employment law are private law, but they are such defined fields unto themselves that they are not a primary focus of what we are calling the New Private Law. For our part, we certainly don’t mean for the list of topics contained in our welcome blog posts to be exhaustive. If our efforts can have the effect of making people more receptive to seeing areas like corporate law partly in private law terms, we will consider that a great success. In any event, we are eager to host and share thoughts on private law across a range of fields and topics!
John Goldberg & Henry Smith