Please share your thoughts and questions about this

As Lee and Rosenbloom convincingly establish, the scope of a public servants' job is defined in the constitution and their faithful execution of their post rests upon their understanding of the parameters of the constitution. The assert that it is a concern not only for how the execute the law through the agencies, programs, and policies they oversee but for how they treat the individuals they oversee as their public office bears the weight of the government's authority and power in a way that private positions do not (Location 423 in Kindle edition).

As seen in the HUD v. Rucker et al. Case, it was important that the public housing authority understood the statute they were acting upon when evicting tenants and the court ultimately sided with them on very strong legal grounds given the wording of the statute, congress' legislative powers, and the omission in this particular article of a forfeiture provision that congress did provide in other articles of statutes concerned with eviction. The public housing authority correctly read and understood its powers in the case of evictions in public housing and executed that power within the bounds of the law, including giving due notice to tenants prior to eviction. The Supreme Court ruling makes a clarification that may assist public servants going forward when executing evictions in public housing by specifying that it is at the discretion of public housing authorities and is not mandatory that an eviction occur though they are entitled to evict any tenant, whether aware or not, whose guests or co-signers are using drugs on or around public housing. Therefore, it is undoubtedly important that public servants are up-to-date not only on the underlying constitutional mandates around their area of government function but about the developments of that law in the courts.

Such faithful administration of the law is evident in Secretary Liu's 2002 memo which ensures that all public housing directors (to whom the memo is addressed) are aware of the implications of the ruling. She enumerates some of the considerations that may go into a PHAs discretionary decision regarding eviction including the effect on the family, willingness to remove the offender from the lease, and the health and safety of the whole housing complex. Interestingly, she emphasizes that HUD already recognized the discretion of PHAs in these cases and that the decision makes no substantive change to PHAs administration of the law but dutifully writes this memo nonetheless, to ensure housing directors are reminded of their duties in this area given the ruling of a complementary branch of government as concerns the purview of their jobs.