Law Commons^™

Civil Servant Disobedience, Jennifer Nou

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Bureaucratic resistance is a historically unexceptional feature of the administrative state. What is striking is the extent to which it has become publicly defiant under the Trump Administration. Civil servants are openly defying executive directives in their official capacity, despite strong norms to the contrary. The social practice raises both parallels and contrasts to civil disobedience by private citizens; it thus similarly raises the need for sustained scholarly debate. This article seeks to isolate the phenomenon of civil servant disobedience conceptually and begin an exploration into its normative implications. In particular, it considers the ideal of a reciprocal hierarchy, whereby …