• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

USA - Government

The Constitution of the United States is the central instrument of American government and the supreme law of the land. For more than two centuries it has guided the evolution of governmental institutions and has provided the basis for political stability, individual freedom, economic growth, and social progress. The US Constitution is the world’s oldest written constitution still in force, one that has served as the model for a number of other constitutions around the world.

The Constitution owes its staying power to its simplicity and flexibility. Originally designed in the late 18th century to provide a framework for governing 4 million people in 13 very different states along North America’s Atlantic coast, its basic provisions were so soundly conceived that, with only 27 amendments, it now serves the needs of more than 300 million Americans in 50 even more diverse states that stretch from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.

The Constitution and the federal government stand at the peak of a governmental pyramid that includes local and state jurisdictions. In the U.S. system each level of government has a large degree of autonomy with certain powers reserved particularly to itself. Disputes between different jurisdictions are resolved by the courts. However, there are questions involving the national interest that require the cooperation of all levels of government simultaneously, and the Constitution makes provision for this as well. American public schools, for example, are largely administered by local jurisdictions, adhering to statewide standards. But the federal government also aids the schools, since literacy and educational attainment are matters of vital national interest, and it enforces uniform standards designed to further equal educational opportunity. In other areas, such as housing, health, and welfare, there is a similar partnership between the various levels of government.

The U.S. Constitution calls itself the “supreme law of the land.” Courts have interpreted this clause to mean that when state constitutions or laws passed by state legislatures or by the national Congress are found to conflict with the federal Constitution, these laws have no force. Decisions handed down by the Supreme Court over the course of two centuries have confirmed and strengthened this doctrine of constitutional supremacy.

The three main branches of government—executive, legislative, judicial—are separate and distinct from one another. The powers given to each are delicately balanced by the powers of the other two. Each branch serves as a check on potential excesses of the others.

The Constitution, together with laws passed according to its provisions and treaties entered into by the president and approved by the Senate, stands above all other laws, executive acts, and regulations.

All persons are equal before the law and are equally entitled to its protection. All states are equal, and none can receive special treatment from the federal government. Within the limits of the Constitution, each state must recognize and respect the laws of the others. State governments, like the federal government, must be democratic in form, with final authority resting with the people.

The Congress, by a two-thirds vote in each house, may initiate an amendment. Alternatively, the legislatures of two-thirds of the states may ask Congress to call a national convention to discuss and draft amendments. In either case, amendments must have the approval of three-fourths of the states before they enter into force.

Aside from the direct process of changing the Constitution, the effect of its provisions may be changed by judicial interpretation. Early in the history of the republic, in the 1803 case of Marbury v. Madison, the Supreme Court established the doctrine of judicial review, which is the power of the Court to interpret acts of Congress and decide their constitutionality. The doctrine also embraces the power of the Court to explain the meaning of various sections of the Constitution as they apply to changing legal, political, economic, and social conditions.

The seat of government is Washington, D.C. (the District of Columbia), a federal enclave located between the states of Maryland and Virginia on the eastern seaboard. The White House, both residence and office of the president, is located there.

Based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of federal government employees has grown at an average annual rate of only 0.4 percent since 1955, from 2.3 million employees to 2.8 million. Local government, on the other hand, has grown at a rate of 2.4 percent per year, from 3.5 million employees in 1955 to 14.1 million in August 2012. State government growth averaged 2.6 percent per year, from 1.1 million to 5 million.

Civil Service - History

Beginning with the Administration of George Washington, the appointment—subject to the advice and consent of the Senate where appropriate—and removal of federal officers occurred at the President's discretion by virtue of Article II of the Constitution. Washington appointed Federalists friendly to the new form of government. Subsequent presidents made appointments and removals to advance their agendas.

However, over the course of the Nineteenth Century, presidents began to lose control of the appointment and removal process due to the rise of the patronage system. By the 1880s appointments to positions in the executive branch were predominantly made based on political connections, typically as a reward for loyal supporters of the party in power. Members of Congress and local party machines would use their influence with the President to get their preferred candidate's Federal appointments. The patronage system began showing strain as the Federal Government expanded rapidly after the Civil War. The Federal civilian workforce nearly doubled in size between 1871 and 1881, from 51,000 to 100,000 employees.

The expanded scale made monitoring and managing patronage employees harder for both the President and his Congressional allies. Elected officials spent a significant proportion of their time arranging patronage appointments; future President James Garfield estimated a third of Congress members' waking hours were spent on such tasks. At the same time, the President spent an inordinate amount of time as a “position broker,” handing out many jobs under great political pressure.

These time demands also meant that patronage appointees became subject to little scrutiny once in office. They often provided poor services that frustrated the President, members of Congress, and the voting public. For example, in the increasingly commercialized U.S. economy of the late 19th Century, businesses needed a well-functioning postal system for shipments and customhouses for imports. They saw how the spoils system often prevented the Government from providing these services reliably; perhaps unsurprisingly a majority of civil service reform association members came from business organizations.

Patronage also focused Federal appointees' attention on the local concerns of party machines instead of the national concerns of the President and Congress. By the 1880s, the President and Congress had concluded that the costs of the spoils system outweighed its benefits, and that in many cases patronage appointments made advancing their agendas harder. The final straw was the assassination of President James Garfield by a disappointed office seeker. This dynamic led Congress to pass, and President Chester A. Arthur to sign, the Pendleton Act of 1883. The Pendleton Act established the classified service—what is today known as the competitive service. Appointments to classified positions were to be made based on merit, assessed through competitive examinations. Executive branch officials could not consider campaign contributions or “political service” in appointments to or removals from classified positions. The Pendleton Act also established the Civil Service Commission (CSC) to help implement and enforce its requirements. When the Pendleton Act became law, President Arthur placed approximately one-tenth of the Federal workforce into the classified service, including half of positions in the postal service and three-quarters of positions in customhouses. The civil service expanded rapidly under subsequent administrations, covering just under half of the Federal workforce by 1896. Though the Pendleton Act extensively regulated the process of filling classified positions, employees in the new civil service remained at-will. While the law prohibited executive branch officials from dismissing classified employees because they declined to render political services, they otherwise served at the pleasure of the President. Civil service employees also had no right to appeal or otherwise contest removals. Instead, the Pendleton Act was enforced through penalties on officials who violated its requirements. The reformers who created the Pendleton Act made a conscious decision to keep the civil service at-will. They wanted to create a merit system that would provide high-quality services; they feared that cumbersome removal protections would entrench poor performers. Civil service reformers saw little risk of patronage-based dismissals as long as civil service hiring forbid rewarding campaign supporters with new appointments. George William Curtis, the president of the National Civil Service Reform League who helped draft the Pendleton Act and secure its passage, explained: "[I]t is better to take the risk of occasional injustice from passion and prejudice, which no law or regulation can control, than to seal up incompetency, negligence, insubordination, insolence, and every other mischief in the service, by requiring a virtual trial at law before an unfit or incapable clerk can be removed." In other words, “if the front door [is] properly tended, the back door [will] take care of itself.” Reflecting this contemporaneous understanding of the law, President Benjamin Harrison's CSC “refused to construe the Civil Service Act of 1883 as imposing any limits on the president's removal power and disclaimed any authority to investigate removals aside from those for failure to pay political assessments.” The CSC requested an Executive Order requiring officials to formally memorialize the reasons for dismissing civil service employees. The CSC believed this would further discourage covert patronage-based removals. President William McKinley subsequently issued Executive Order 101 on July 27, 1897. This order provided that “No removal shall be made from any position subject to competitive examination except for just cause and upon written charges filed with the head of the Department, or other appointing officer, and of which the accused shall have full notice and an opportunity to make defense.” The CSC became concerned that some were construing Executive Order 101's “just cause” requirement to mandate the equivalent of a trial to dismiss civil service employees. The Commission believed this “would give a performance of tenure in the public service quite inconsistent with the efficiency of that service.” The CSC therefore asked President Theodore Roosevelt to issue an executive order clarifying that “just cause” meant any legitimate, non-political reason, and that trials were unnecessary. President Roosevelt did so on May 29, 1902, by issuing Executive Order 173. That order provided that “just cause” means any cause, other than political or religious, that promotes the efficiency of the service, and trials or hearings were not required to dismiss an employee. President William Howard Taft issued Executive Order 1471 in February 1912 reaffirming and restating the prior McKinley and Roosevelt orders. Congress subsequently codified Executive Order 1471 as the Lloyd-La Follette Act of 1912, which mandated that “no examination of witnesses nor any trial or hearing shall be required except in the discretion of the officer making the removal.” In 1913 the CSC explained the policy governing civil service dismissals: "The rules are not framed on a theory of life tenure, fixed permanence, nor vested right in office. It is recognized that subordination and discipline are essential, and that therefore dismissal for just cause shall be not unduly hampered. The rules have at all times left the power of removal as free as possible, providing restraints only to ensure its proper exercise . . . Appointing officers, therefore, are entirely free to make removals for any reasons relating to the interests of good administration, and they are made the final judges of the sufficiency of the reasons. No examination of witnesses or any trial or hearing is required . . . The rule is merely intended to prevent removals upon secret charges and to stop political pressure for removals . . . . No tenure of office is created except that based upon efficiency and good behavior." The Lloyd-La Follette Act and its predecessor executive orders did not give classified civil service employees tenure. They instead imposed procedural requirements to prevent merely political or religiously-motivated removals. Agencies remained the sole judge of employee conduct and performance. For the first six decades of the merit service employees could not appeal removals. That only began to change during the Second World War. The Veterans Preference Act (VPA) of 1944 gave veterans significant hiring preferences for Federal jobs. It also provided that veterans—including those in the excepted service—could be dismissed only to promote the efficiency of the service and allowed veterans to appeal adverse actions to the CSC. The congressional record on this provision is scarce, but commentors have suggested it was motivated by concerns that agencies would honor veteran hiring procedures on the front end, only to pretextually dismiss veterans on the back end.[34] In 1948, Congress amended the law to make CSC appeals binding on agencies. These amendments gave preference-eligible veterans the ability to appeal removals outside their agency. Until the 1950s, courts would entertain procedural challenges to civil service removals, overturning them where agencies did not follow Lloyd-La Follette procedures. But courts generally avoided examining the substance of removal actions.[36] A significant precedent was established in 1954 when the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals decided Roth v. Brownell. The plaintiff, Roth, had been hired into a competitive service position in the Department of Justice (DOJ). President Truman subsequently moved his position into Schedule A of the excepted service. In 1953 President Eisenhower moved Roth's position into the then-newly created Schedule C and shortly thereafter dismissed him. Roth was not a veteran and could not appeal to the CSC. He instead filed suit in federal court, arguing that DOJ had failed to follow Lloyd-La Follette procedures before removing him. Analyzing the text of the Lloyd-La Follette Act, the D.C. Circuit agreed. The law provided that “[n]o person in the classified civil service of the United States shall be removed or suspended without pay therefrom except for such cause as will promote the efficiency of such service and for reasons given in writing.” The court explained that Roth was either removed from the civil service in 1947—when his position was moved into Schedule A—or in 1953, when he was dismissed. Without deciding which action removed him from the civil service, the court ordered his discharge reversed because Lloyd-La Follette procedures had not been followed in either case. Roth thus held that Lloyd-La Follette procedures must be followed to take employees out of the competitive service—either through a discharge or through moving the position into the excepted service. Notably, Roth did not allow employees to contest the substance of removals—only whether proper procedures were followed. The D.C. Circuit subsequently clarified that agencies could dismiss employees from confidential or policy-making positions based purely on loss of confidence. In Leonard v. Douglas (1963) the D.C. Circuit concluded that removing an employee from a policy-making position because his superiors did not find him suitable to advance their policies promoted “the efficiency of the service” and was therefore lawful. While the Lloyd-La Follette Act and Veterans Preference Act imposed procedural requirements on removals, agencies generally retained broad authority to dismiss employees for non-discriminatory reasons. Those reasons included removing employees from policy-influencing positions based purely on the belief they would not effectively advance the President's policies. In the 1950s the courts began to permit limited judicial examination of the substance of removals. In a series of cases, the Supreme Court held that the Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment prohibited the government from dismissing employees for exercising constitutionally protected rights when those activities were unrelated to their job duties. Consequently, until the 1960s agencies had to follow statutory procedures to dismiss employees, but they could broadly remove employees for any work-related grounds. These grounds included loss of confidence in an employee in a policy-making position. The procedural requirements—notice and an opportunity to respond, followed by a written explanation of the reason for removal—were also modest. For the general Federal workforce, agencies were also the final judge of whether cause existed for dismissal. The Lloyd-La Follette Act was neither interpreted nor applied to give employees a right to their jobs. Courts would rarely evaluate the substance of adverse actions, except if they occurred in response to employees exercising their constitutional rights. This changed in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1962 President Kennedy's Executive Order 10987 required agencies to create internal procedures for non-veterans to appeal adverse actions. President Richard Nixon's Executive Orders 11491 and 11787 transferred these internal appeals to the CSC, aligning the process for veterans and non-veterans. The Supreme Court also dramatically changed the legal landscape in Arnett v. Kennedy (1974). In that case the Supreme Court held that a federal employee has a constitutional due process interest in continued federal employment. Arnett made constitutional due process challenges generally applicable to civil service removals, not just when employees were fired for exercising constitutional rights. Congress legislated against this backdrop when it passed the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA). The CSRA replaced the Lloyd-La Follette Act, VPA, executive orders, and private rights of action in Federal court with a new unified framework governing adverse actions and subsequent appeals. President Jimmy Carter explained the law was meant “to bring efficiency and accountability to the Federal Government.” The CSRA maintained prohibitions on patronage and restricted adverse actions in some respects. For example, the CSRA gave non-preference eligible employees in the competitive service the same right to appeal demotions that preference eligible employees possessed. The CSRA also expanded preference-eligible employees' ability to appeal suspensions. Under the VPA preference-eligible employees could appeal suspensions of greater than 30 days. The CSRA allowed appeals of suspensions of more than 14 days. In other ways, the CSRA made taking adverse actions easier. It created chapter 43, intended to be a faster process for removing poor performers. It further prevented Federal employees from directly challenging removals in Federal district court. The CSRA instead channeled adverse action appeals to the MSPB, with judicial review of the MSPB rulings. Congress subsequently transferred most appeals of MSPB decisions to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals when it created that court in 1982. This was intended to create a uniform body of procedures and case law governing the Federal workforce. The CSRA also repealed Lloyd-La Follette provisions governing removal from the competitive service, replacing it with a new unified framework of adverse action appeals for both competitive service employees and excepted service preference-eligibles. The CSRA thus removed from Federal law the language the D.C. Circuit interpreted in Roth. The CSRA originally excluded from chapter 75 adverse action procedures excepted service employees who were not preference eligibles. Chapter 75 also excluded any excepted service employees—preference eligible or not—whose positions the President, OPM, or an agency head, as applicable, determined had a policy-influencing character. In United States v. Fausto (1988), the Supreme Court held that employees statutorily excluded from chapter 75 could not contest removals in Federal district court. The Court explained that the CSRA created a comprehensive review system for adverse actions; exclusion from CSRA coverage meant employees could not appeal adverse actions elsewhere. Shortly thereafter, Congress passed the Civil Service Due Process Amendments Act of 1990. This law, which remains in effect, amended the CSRA by extending chapter 75 to generally cover excepted service employees—preference eligible or not—after an initial trial period. At the same time, Congress retained the exclusion for excepted service employees in policy-influencing positions. To summarize, the Pendleton Act of 1883 did not substantively limit the ability of agencies to remove employees for non-political reasons. Nor did subsequent executive orders or the Lloyd-La Follette Act. They instead required agencies to follow procedural steps and document the basis for their actions, but agencies remained the final judge of the reasons for dismissal. For the first six decades of the merit service employees could not appeal removals outside their agency. Adverse action appeals began in the 1940s and were initially limited to preference eligible employees. Only in the 1960s did executive orders extend dismissal appeals to the broader Federal workforce. In the 1970s, the Supreme Court construed the Lloyd-La Follette Act to give civil service employees a property interest in their jobs, thus requiring constitutional due process before removals. The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 reorganized and codified these procedures, creating the civil service framework that remains in effect today. The CSRA and the subsequent Due Process Amendments Act also authorized OPM and the President to exempt employees in policy-influencing positions from chapter 75 adverse action procedures and appeals.