ABSTRACT
Public administration in the United States has at least three highly developed legal dimensions: the constitutional separation of powers; administrative law; and individual constitutional rights. The federal judiciary began to infuse constitutional rights into public administrative practice in the early 1950s. By 1975, this infusion crystallized into a systematic model that remains the framework for defining constitutional rights in the context of US public administration. The Madisonian model for the separation of powers is an overarching legal dimension of US public administration. It is familiar to students of US government and is a leading framework for analyzing the impact of the Constitution on federal administration. The Legislative Reorganization Act was designed to improve Congress's capacity to legislate and oversee federal administration. Historically, clients, customers, and public employees lacked constitutional rights in their encounters with public administration due to a judicial construction called the 'doctrine of privilege'.
