Teaching public administration and the rule of law

Abstract

Since the adoption by NASPAA of universal competencies, there have been calls in this, as well as other, journals for a renewed focus on law-related courses in MPA and MPP curricula. There appears to have been a decline in the number of accredited programs offering such courses, even though the legitimacy of public administration depends in large part on its constitutional and legal foundations. The currently unsettled political and legal environment is a further reason to provide graduates of NASPAA accredited programs with the intellectual tools needed to navigate through these turbulent times. This case study describes a special topic course on the role of public agencies and the courts in advancing the rule of law offered to a wide range of MPA students, and team-taught by the authors, one a professor who taught administrative law for 40 years and the other an attorney with 36 years of experience as a litigator.