The civil servant's role in the implementation of constitutional rights

Abstract

This article examines the role civil servants play in ensuring that politicians fulfil their constitutional obligations. Scholars have not generally identified civil servants as a positive force in constitutional implementation. Rather, the literature tends to criticize the emergence of civil servants, and government lawyers in particular, as new drivers of the policy process. Taking the Canadian policy process as my starting point, I push back against this criticism and suggest that civil servants, legally trained and otherwise, are uniquely positioned to insist that constitutional implementation be an explicit policy focus.