A "Reasonable" Public Servant in a Liberal Constitutional Democracy

This paper argues that, although the United States Constitution clearly mandates the government to promote the collective action goals of the people and ensure, at the same time, the protection of contractual rights (individual liberties and civil rights) guaranteed by the Constitution, the discipline of public administration in the United States historically has been preoccupied with a search of efficiency to the neglect of contractarian constitutional obligations. The paper points out that this is a serious failure on the part of American public administration, and that the intellectual tradition of American public administration as we know it cannot be an exemplar of public administration in a liberal constitutional democracy. During the last half century, the U.S. Supreme Court has provided a rich body of case law that addresses the constitutional character of public administration by filling the void created by the orthodox of American public administration. The paper argues that U.S. Supreme Court opinion are much more relevant to public administration in liberal democracies. Drawing from U.S. Supreme Court opinions, the paper outlines a framework for constitutional accountability embodied in a model of the reasonable public servant. In essence, a reasonable public servant is one who performs the collective action goals of the government vigorously yet in a manner that comports with the constitution's contractarian obligations: protection of individual liberties and civil rights. The paper elucidates this accountability framework with leading Supreme Court cases.