Civil Service Law

Oliver P. Field

Professor Field’s tightly articulated treatise considers first the constitutionality and scope of civil service laws, and the establishment of the civil service; and then devotes a chapter to each step in the process of personnel administration: classification, examination, certification, appointment, promotion, demotion, suspension, removal and judicial review thereof. The last chapter is a pretty case study in the interrelation of statutory and common-law remedies and their effect on “substantive” rights.

Throughout Professor Field addresses himself to the problems of the personnel administrator, and of the statutory draftsman. He is keenly aware that “careless or unskilled draftsmanship sometimes results in problems of construction for the courts which ought not to be forced up on the.” (p. 20) Although so much of the law of civil service has a statutory base, Professor Field’s citations are almost exclusively to the cases.

This book is a notable addition to the literature of administrative law, indispensable to the operating official, personnel officer, draftsman, and attorney. -Charles S. Ascher

-JSTOR: Columbia Law Review, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Feb. 1940). pp. 363-365

Oliver P. Field was a professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota.

Professor Field’s tightly articulated treatise considers first the constitutionality and scope of civil service laws, and the establishment of the civil service; and then devotes a chapter to each step in the process of personnel administration: classification, examination, certification, appointment, promotion, demotion, suspension, removal and judicial review thereof. The last chapter is a pretty case study in the interrelation of statutory and common-law remedies and their effect on “substantive” rights.

Throughout Professor Field addresses himself to the problems of the personnel administrator, and of the statutory draftsman. He is keenly aware that “careless or unskilled draftsmanship sometimes results in problems of construction for the courts which ought not to be forced up on the.” (p. 20) Although so much of the law of civil service has a statutory base, Professor Field’s citations are almost exclusively to the cases.

This book is a notable addition to the literature of administrative law, indispensable to the operating official, personnel officer, draftsman, and attorney. -Charles S. Ascher

-JSTOR: Columbia Law Review, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Feb. 1940). pp. 363-365