Federal Service and the Constitution

This updated version of Rosenbloom's groundbreaking book contributes immensely and significantly to the fields of public administration, public law, and public personnel administration. Rosenbloom carefully and assiduously examines the evolving conception of federal employees in tandem with changes and developments in constitutional law. This second edition incorporates a number of contemporary themes (e.g., reinventing government; contracting) as they relate to public employees and the law. Rosenbloom's research is extraordinarily insightful and his writing is impeccable. This book should be required reading in every public administration program. -- Norma Riccucci, School of Public Affairs and Administration, Rutgers University, Newark David Rosenbloom has successfully revised his important 1971 book by considering subsequent modifications in the public employment relationship. In this second edition, he describes and analyzes forty years of developments in politics, administration, and law. Anyone interested in understanding public employment in the 21st century should read this book. -- Robert Vaughn , Professor of Law and A. Allen King Scholar, Washington College of Law, American University

Looks at the constitutional rights of federal employees from the nation's founding to the present. This book concludes that the current status of constitutional rights may reflect a shift to a model based on private sector practices.Conceived during the turbulent period of the late 1960s when 'rights talk' was ubiquitous, Federal Service and the Constitution, a landmark study first published in 1971, strove to understand how the rights of federal civil servants had become so differentiated from those of ordinary citizens. Now in a new, second edition, this legal-historical analysis reviews and enlarges its look at the constitutional rights of federal employees from the nation's founding to the present. Thoroughly revised and updated, this highly readable history of the constitutional relationship between federal employees and the government describes how the changing political, administrative, and institutional concepts of what the federal service is or should be are related to the development of constitutional doctrines defining federal employees' constitutional rights. Developments in society since 1971 have dramatically changed the federal bureaucracy, protecting and expanding employment rights, while at the same time Supreme Court decisions are eroding the special legal status of federal employees. Looking at the current status of these constitutional rights, Rosenbloom concludes by suggesting that recent Supreme Court decisions may reflect a shift to a model based on private sector practices.