All arrangements having to do with constitutional institutions, and with the distribution and exercise of power, mainly came under public law. The most important of these arrangements were the competences of the Assembly; the functioning of the Council; the powers of the prytaneis; the control of the archons and generals; and the composition and functioning of the law courts.

Particular importance attached to the institutions controlling legislative activity; measures to protect the legislative system; and procedural arrangements more generally. To this same category belonged institutions such as ostracism and the dokimasia. The categories of what would be known today as the law of realty and contract were examined in relation to public law, on which they partly depended. Moreover, the city's interventions were frequent, and powerful. Contractual law included voluntary and involuntary relations.

Lastly, in the Archaic period what is today known as penal law came under the heading of personal or family reprisals, under the control of the city, which defined what the penalties and sanctions should be, and the way in which it should impose itself.