Understanding Law for Public Administration

A comprehensive overview and resource for public administration students and practitioners. This book is a combination of an introduction to basic legal principles, analysis of excerpts from instructive cases, and practical advice. It is an original approach to learning about law for those who work for the public good, the culmination of more than twenty-five years of research, study, counseling, law reform work, and reflection on what the law is and should be and how this can be explained to any reasonably thoughtful person. The book combines substantive coverage of law subjects likely to be encountered in public administration, analysis of illustrative cases, and practical advice. It distills and simplifies complex topics and combines legal theory with practical realities. The book describes the general nature of the laws, cases, and legal principles that public administrators are most likely to encounter. It begins by considering the sources of rules that govern our behavior, the evolution of formal law, and formal sources of law in the United States legal system. The next several chapters discuss constitutional law principles, providing an overview of important issues and analyzing important illustrative cases. The next several chapters follow a similar approach to the main law subjects likely to be encountered in public administration. The remaining chapters cover practical matters, including public ethics, how to deal with lawyers, and how to do legal research.