Dr. Yonis Salahalden
Department of Law
Cihan University - Erbil
The public policy, or what is called sometimes as the public order, is a significant weapon in the hands of any state, territory, or region to enforce their legal systems and oblige people, whether they be citizens or foreigners, to abide by their legal rules and customary usages. And from this idea, we can understand the importance of the public policy to annihilate or, at least, minimize the risks, dissemination, and harmful effects of the pandemic coronavirus COVID-19. To begin with, we can define the public policy as a group of the legal rules pertaining to the ultimate or superior interests of any state, territory, region, or even society, which are political, social, economic, or moral. It is worth bearing in mind that this is the agreed-upon and the widely-held definition of the concept of public policy among civil law jurists. Even though the Iraqi civil law No 40 of 1951 does not mention this definition literally. And although this definition does not indicate or refer to health affairs and hygienic interests as types of the ultimate or superior benefits of any state, territory, region, or even society. But we can infer or conclude the sanitary affairs, to be defended by the concept of the public policy from analyzing its essential elements in the field of the administrative law. This law, notwithstanding its pertinence to the area of public law, but is profoundly affected by the civil law, which is considered as the basis of most of the legislation, despite the difference of their affiliation. It is worth mentioning in this respect that the administrative law sub-categorizes the public policy into three essential elements: Public security, the public health, and the public serenity. What is essential in this respect the second element, that is to say, the public health. By merging the civil law definition of the public policy with its four types of higher of superior interests, with the basic elements of the public policy from the standpoint of the administrative law, we can reach to a conclusion that the three essential elements of the public policy determined by the administrative law, must be gathered together with the afore-mentioned four types of ultimate or superior interests enjoyed by any state, territory, region or even society. We can also conclude from this indispensable merger of the concept of the public policy in both the civil and administrative laws, that the Kurdistan region can impose or enforce legally any type of curfew, as long as the health or hygienic interests are considered as the highest and superior interests, closely related to other public interests, from which the public policy is made up of.
