【正文】 nce in the constitutional aspects of public service requires at least two types of significant study and effort. First, one must understand the broad principles on which constitutional law rests. Second, and a more prehensive challenge, one must learn the constitutional requirements that currently govern public service in the United States. Parts one and two of this book provides the analysis and information necessary to understand how constitutional law has to be factored into the reasonable public servant?s job performance. They explain the potential liability of public servants and their employers for violating individuals? constitutional rights and what constitutional procedural due process, free speech, privacy, and equal protection require. Although “[t]he Constitution is largely a document of the imagination”, gaining an understanding of a few of its fundamental principles goes a long way toward making constitutional law relatively concrete and accessible. These principles are especially important: incursions on constitutional rights must be necessary and bounded, and the Constitution is always a work in progress. Personal responsibility In the United States, all pubic servants, elected or appointed, enter the public service by taking an oath that they will uphold the Constitution of the United States. Taking an oath is an act of mitment. The Constitution is ordained, as declares the Preamble, “in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the mon defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” In the Bill of Rights adopted by the First Congress and ratified less than three years later in 1791, the Constitution contractually guarantees to the people that while carrying out these utilitarian objectives, the government will protect the inalienable rights of the people, enumerated or not, with fundamental fairness. In the large sense, the oathtaking is an act of making a moral and legal mitment that the public servant will conduct public affairs in constitutional terms. The bottom line in any guarantee is “damages or nothing”. During the First Congress, the Bill of Rights was conceived with an “implicit” understanding that the administration of governmental affairs might cause the deprivation of rights guaranteed to individual citizens, and when such transgressions occur, the government would be responsible for the injuries. In Marbury v. Madison, Chief Justice Marshall expressed his understanding of this contractual responsibility, “The very essence of civil liberty…consists in the right of every individual to claim the protection of the laws, whenever he [or she] receives an injury”. It should be mentioned in haste, though, that throughout the history of the republic, individuals seeking constitutional damages against the government and public servants have encountered an enormously difficult legal barrier. This was due, in part, to the mon law doctrine of sovereign immunity and in part to the absence of specific, enabling legislation. Fast forwarding, courts today recognize an unrestricted cause of action for damages against local governmental bodies and restricted cause of action against federal and state governments. Courts, however, recognize a full cause of action against all public servants engaged in executive functions (possibly with the exception of the president), federal, state, and local, under the Constitution and statutory schemes. A reasonable public servant taking an oath, therefore, understands that while the Constitution grants the power and authority to discharge the official duties vigorously, it also holds individuals “personally” or “officially” responsible for the civil damages, should they arise from the transgression of others? constitutional rights? The dis