Conceptual Exploration of ‘Revival of Public Rights' through a Comparative Study of Public Interest Lawsuits

The notion of the "Revival of Public Rights" has always been a controversial topic in legal doctrines and judicial practice. Public rights and their instances on one side, and the concept of revival on the other, constitute the core of this divergence. This ambiguity has intensified with the emergence of new social developments, necessitating the anticipation of innovative methods to ensure public interest more prominently. The necessity to sue environmental violations, capital market misconduct, problems related to the quality of automobiles, and over the recent years calamities arising from the COVID-19 pandemic are among the factors that have posed discussions related to the revival of public rights and judicial methods to guarantee public benefit. While discussions on judicial guarantees of public interest in our legal system are of less enrichment, in legal systems of other countries, it has been extensively elaborated. Public interest law and the associated topics, such as public interest lawsuits, position, and rights admissible in these lawsuits, are closely linked to the concept of revival of public rights. This article, by employing a descriptive-analytical method and utilizing library data, along with interviews with most of provincial prosecutors and their practices, aims to remove ambiguities associated with the concept of public rights and its revival through comparative data analysis, with a focus on common law systems. Based on the findings of this research, public rights should be interpreted as rights without any limited beneficiaries, and retrieval, in terms of nature, signifies the concept of supervision and is equivalent to the non-criminal authorities of prosecutors.