Outsourcing the Constitution and Administrative Law Norms

Abstract

In the United States, the constitutional constraints and administrative law requirements imposed on government agencies generally have no applicability to private entities performing outsourced public administrative activities. In this article, the authors broadly explore the issues associated with outsourcing constitutional and administrative law norms along with government work by imposing them on private contractors. The authors seek to help frame these issues more cogently for the public administration community in an effort to promote more comprehensive and thoughtful discussion of outsourcing and a greater role for public administrative expertise in determining when and how to apply constitutional and administrative law norms to government contractors.