Guerrilla Statesmanship: Constitutionalizing an Ethic of Dissent

Abstract

According to judicial precedents, administrators informed by their expertise can speak on issues of public concern under First Amendment protections. In one sense, they could dissent by working against their employers in an attempt to direct issues of public concern through an educational function. The power to act like a statesman in raising such issues allows administrators to lead from behind and in front, as long as certain judicial thresholds are met. However, the U.S. Supreme Court recently moved to tighten the scope of such activity. This article assesses how an ethic of dissent has been translated into a constitutional perspective that at first was moderately constrained and later became very restricted. While the move to limit an ethic of dissent provides necessary constraints, it also may have weakened administrators’ ability to perform necessary statesmanship acts rooted in guerrilla government to achieve the common good.

Whistleblowing Policies in American States: A Nationwide Analysis

“… 1. Although this study focuses on whistleblowing codes and laws in state government, several studies have examined whistleblowing at the federal level (see, for example, Lavena, 2014, on determinants of whistleblowing in the federal government and Callier, 2017, on the relationship between public service motivation and public interest disclosures in the U.S. federal agencies). For related articles on the legality and ethics of dissent, see O’Leary (2013) on guerrilla government, Newswander (2015) on guerrilla statesmanship, Reed (2014) on loyal dissent, DeHart-Davis on the unbureaucratic personality, and Borry (2017) on rule-bending. …”

Irrelevance of “Public Use” in State Eminent Domain Reforms

“…Post-Kelo reform studies find, however, that the majority of policies lack due process protections (Hudson, 2010) and have not undergone judicial scrutiny of the exceptions yet (Mihaly & Smith, 2011). This is at odds with the work of those scholars writing on implementing constitutional principles (Newbold, 2010;Newswander, 2015;Rohr, 1989;Rosenbloom, 2013). Table 3 shows states that prohibit economic and private development takings (10 out of 46), approximately 22%.…”

“…A mindfulness of the population likely to be affected, beyond the target population, as well as the ripple effect of implementation may require more technical training (Hunter, 2004; Mawdsley, 2000). Practitioners implementing takings must make responsible, difficult policy decisions (Krislov, 1974), or what Newswander (2015) calls “governing is ugly” (p. 868). Gooden (2004) and Meier and Bohte (2006) both write about some degree of active responsiveness in the problem-solving process.…”

Why Public Employees Rebel: Guerrilla Government in the Public Sector

“…At a general level, administrators may serve in this capacity by internalizing the ethos of the Constitution's checking function by pushing back against abusive and authoritarian actions (Spicer ) and assuming the role of a trustee (Miller and Whitford ). Their guerrilla acts can be grand overtures that try to fundamentally change a governmental entity or policy (Newswander ), or they can be small in scope, guiding issues of public importance such as finding justice for someone who has been abused by public officials (Newswander ).…”