ABSTRACT
U.S. constitutional law currently places broad and substantial constraints on public administrative behavior at all levels of government. Since the 1950s, public administrators' interactions with clients and customers, coworkers, contractors, patients confined to public mental health facilities, prisoners, and individuals involved in street-level administrative regulation have become bounded by constitutional law.[1–3] Federal court decisions based on a mix of statutory, constitutional, and common law have also made public administrators vulnerable to "constitutional tort" suits, that is, civil suits for money damages to redress their violations of individuals' constitutional rights.
