ABSTRACT
From: Public Administration Review 70(4) July/August, 2010: 538-546. Moving toward a Constitutional School for the field of public adminis-
tration would improve the quality of scholarship associated with how to maintain and preserve core democratic-republican values embedded in the American constitutional tradition. Those of us who are part of establishing this movement define the Constitutional School as a group of public administration scholars and practitioners, joined in a loose confederation, characterized by an interest in the principles embodied in the U.S. Constitution as the basis for our research and practice.1 We see the Constitution as the normative base for our scholarship, and it demands that we reemphasize and reestablish a greater commitment to how the rule of law pervades public administrative management in its entirety (Rosenbloom, 2002, 2003). Those associated with the Constitutional School would most likely still agree with Ronald Moe and Robert Gilmour’s position, one they established 15 years ago: “Today, public administration has largely abandoned or forgotten its roots in public law-and has accepted, to varying degrees, the generic behavioral principles of management as taught in schools of business” (1995, p. 135). The purpose of this article is to demonstrate in clear, articulate terms why
constitutional tradition and rule of law should serve as the foundations of public administration scholarship in the United States. Without the acceptance of this norm, American public administration will find itself unable to embrace the intellectual underpinnings that legitimate the field in its entirety (Cook, 1996; P. Cooper, 1997, 2006; Lee & Rosenbloom, 2005; Moe and Gilmour, 1995; Rohr, 1986, 1998, 2002; Rosenbloom, 1971, 1983, 1987, 2003; Rosenbloom, Carroll & Carroll, 2000; Rosenbloom & Kravchuk, 2005; Rosenbloom & O’Leary, 1996; Spicer & Terry, 1993a, 1993b; Terry, 2003; Waldo, 1948; Wamsley et al., 1990). This movement provides three distinct ways to improve public administration scholarship: it emphasizes the intellectual and practical value of the Constitution to the American administrative state; it establishes a consistently used term that works to encourage a specific type of dialogue; and it helps demonstrate how the American Constitution pervades all areas of public administration scholarship and practice.
