Liberty, Concepts, & Applications. Role of Public Administrators

Public administrators are mandated with the task of protecting the civil liberties of the innocent citizens under their rule. This consequently requires the public administrators to ensure the civil liberties of the citizens are guaranteed regardless of the challenges which they might be facing. Public administrators are therefore required to either use power, or the judiciary in order to deal with issues which might pose or put the civil rights of the citizens at stake (McKelvey, 2011). This is a constitutional requirement, whereby public administrators must make sure that they come up with the right mechanisms of combating any issue or person who might be putting the civil liberties of other people at risk.

In this case, this paper is going to base its reasoning on the murder of Anwar Al-Aulaqi, who was killed by the Obama administration. After the death of Al-Aulaqi in Yemen by the U.S soldiers, his father went ahead and petitioned against the murder of his son in the court of law (McKelvey, 2011). This is consequently a case which aimed at affecting the protection of civil liberties by the public administrator and in this case being the department of justice. It was clearly evident that the department of justice aimed at protecting the rights of its citizens through killing Al-Aulaqi who was allied to terrorists.

On the other hand, the law provides clear procedures in dealing with issues such as the one above. In this case, Al-Aulaqi was an American citizen living in Yemen, and killing him was similar to killing an American (McKelvey, 2011). However, the law provides that public administrators can use different ways in order to protect its citizens from any harm and this includes killing those suspected to be linked with terrorist activities. For instance, the court did not in any way hold Obama’s administration liable for the murder of Al-Aulaqi, but it explained how the civil rights of the majority is more important than that of an individual who might be putting the lives of other in danger.

Reference

McKelvey, B. (2011). Due process rights and the targeted killing of suspected terrorists: The unconstitutional scope of executive killing power. Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, 44(5), 1353–1384.