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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.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Christine Reed
Christine Reed, Ph.D. is an emeritus professor in the School of Public Administration at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Before her retirement in 2019, she taught Seminar in Administrative Law for almost 40 years.
Thomas Houston
Thomas Houston, Esq. has 36 years of experience as a litigator with the Omaha law firm of Berkshire-Burmeister. The authors have been team-taught for many years, both in the Certified Public Manager (CPM) program, and as instructors of a recent pilot course on Public and Nonprofit Law for the MPA program.