''Ius publicum'' is

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

for public law. Public law regulated the relationships of the government to its citizens, including taxation, while ''

ius privatum ''Ius privatum'' is Latin for private law. Contrasted with '' ius publicum'' (the laws relating to the state), ''ius privatum'' regulated the relations between individuals. In Roman law this included personal, property and civil law. Judicial proc ...

'' ( private law), based upon property and contract, concerned relations between individuals.Nicholas, Barry (1962). ''An Introduction to Roman Law.'' New York: Oxford University Press, p. 2: "The Romans themselves made a distinction between public law and private law. The former was concerned with the functioning of the state, and included in particular constitutional law and criminal law; the latter was concerned with relations between individuals." The public/private law dichotomy is a structural core of Roman law and all modern western legal systems. Public law will only include some areas of private law close to the end of the Roman state. ''Ius publicum'' was used also to describe obligatory legal regulations, such as '' ius cogens'', which is now a term used in

public international law International law (also known as public international law and the law of nations) is the set of rules, norms, and standards generally recognized as binding between states. It establishes normative guidelines and a common conceptual framework for ...

meaning basic rules which cannot (or should not) be broken, or contracted out of. Regulations that can be changed are called today ''ius dispositivum'', and they are used when parties share something and are not in opposition.

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Roman law Latin legal terminology {{Latin-legal-phrase-stub

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