Public interest
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The public interest refers to the "common well-being" or "general welfare." The public interest is central to policy debates, politics, democracy and the nature of government itself. While nearly everyone claims that aiding the common well-being or general welfare is positive, there is little, if any, consensus on what exactly constitutes the public interest.
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[edit] Ambiguities of the concept
There are different views on how many members of the public must benefit from an action before it can be declared to be in the public interest: at one extreme, an action has to benefit every single member of society in order to be truly in the public interest; at the other extreme, any action can be in the public interest as long as it benefits some of the population and harms none.
Put simply; to be in the public interest a matter might have the potential to adversely affect any person at any time in their life in any situation if a core matter is not put into the public arena or handled in a more reasonable way when the problem clearly becomes evident as symptomatic of an underlying unreasonableness.
It is possible for acts in the public interest to be bad for given individuals and vice versa. This definition allows us to "hold constant" private interests in order to determine those interests that are unique to the public. Stephen Krasner, a political scientist used a similar methodology in his book Defending the National Interest. Krasner identifies cases in which no corporate interest is found in US foreign policy in order to identify and analyze a national interest.
however, when you remove the academic mentality to the scenario, which has often lead to the belief that another academics explanation of a given subject, actually amounts to anything more then a prolonged toilet meandering, and add to that the vanity of practictiontners.....to be continued...amounts to a sad congregation of people that are due to there mentality are not fit to perform this mentalitry is sure to spread amongst all medical disciplines, jocular and very out of sync with the times.., time for integrity to take place, the school boy mentality is totally ridiculous for this day and age.
[edit] United Kingdom public interest law
In law, public interest is a defence against certain lawsuits (for instance some libel suits in the United Kingdom) and an exemption from certain laws or regulations (for instance freedom of information laws in the UK).
Also, judges in common law systems can make judgements on the grounds of public policy, a related term.
