To Run a Constitution

John Rohr has put together a short yet insightful book about the origins and evolution of the administrative regulatory state in the United States. Beginning with the Federalist Papers and other writings of the Framers, working his way through the writings of Woodrow Wilson, Frank Goodnow, and Judge Cooley, and finally looking at works of New Dealers such as Kenneth Culp Davis, Rohr superbly traces the intellectual history of administration. Every senior and mid-level government employee ought to read it.The key theme of this book is legitimacy. Rohr believes (with reason) that while administrative agencies have been found "lega1" by the courts, they are not in fact "legitimate" parts of the American constitutional tradition in the eyes of many citizens. This he blames for the most part on Wilson, Goodnow and other Progressive-Era founders of public administration as an academic discipline because of their preference for British Parliamentary rule over the Constitution. Rohr tries to come up with an alternative history of public administration, one that derives from the Framers themselves. I subtract 1 star because of an analytical flaw in the argument. In warming to his argument, Rohr characterizes Federal bureaucracy as fulfilling the promise of the Constitution because (1) it acts like the Senate in that it deliberates and develops expertise and (2) it acts like the House of Representatives in that, through its sheer size it is more broadly representative of the people than the House could ever be. I have been a federal employee for seven-odd years and I can tell you that the civil service is not a knightly caste or a senatorial order or a broadly representative swathe of "the People." Rohr does not take into account the possibility that federal employees, however benevolent, can become a self-aware interest group that tries to attain advantages for itself, or that federal employees really do move within a relatively circumscribed sphere of action relative to their political and judicial masters. All the same, it is a very useful and well-done book concluded by a timely plea for a greater sense of the constitution as a well-spring for action by civil servants in their every day work. I recommend it highly.

John Rohr sets out to demonstrate the legitimacy of the American Administrative State. At the time of the writing, 1986, (and all too often today) both academics and politicans loved to portray Public Administrators as illegitimate actors in our politics. John corrects this error, seeing the roots for an active Public Administration in our Founding in both the Federalists and Anti-Federalists camps. He then develops the notion of legitimacy by examining different stages in the evolution of the Administrative State and how the Administrative State even heals defects in our Constitutional design. The book is well written and not only supports the Administrative State convincingly, but also teaches Administrators how to construct normative arguments about the role of professional Public Administrators. A must read for those who practice Public Service as well as those who want a fuller understanding of our Constitutional system.