CLP - Bureaucracy and Distrust: The Civil Service in the Constitution

This lecture will be delivered by Dr Ben Yong, as part of the Current Legal Problems Lecture Series 2025-26

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CLP - Bureaucracy and Distrust: The Civil Service in the Constitution

16 Oct 2025, 18:00 – 19:00

UCL Faculty of Laws
4-8 Endsleigh Gardens
London
WC1H 0EG
United Kingdom

Speaker: Dr Ben Yong (Durham University)
Chair: Sir Jonathan Jones KCB KC (Hon) (Linklaters LLP)

About the lecture

The civil service has largely been effaced from the constitution in public law theory. This is partly due to the general aversion of public lawyers to the Executive. But it is also because the civil service is not seen to have an identity or authority of its own—an impression the civil service itself encourages. It is like the ‘nerves and tendons that move the several limbs of a body natural’: what matters are ministers; officials merely advise and implement. The result is that the civil service in public law remains a cipher—its functions, and the sources and limits of its authority remain unclear.

Traditionally, bureaucracy and democracy have been in tension: bureaucracy has been seen as a means to an end; but it also threatened to become an end in itself. In more recent years, with the rise of democratic backsliding and populism, the bureaucracy is portrayed as an obstruction to the will of the people—as expressed through its elected representatives. The civil service is the ‘deep state’, a ‘blob’ with a will of its own, frustrating good government. We are in danger of forgetting that no successful state can function without a bureaucracy.

Once we see the civil service in this context, it becomes an object of study in its own right; and various questions arise for public lawyers. How should we understand the functions and roles of the civil service in a democracy; what is the appropriate balance between the autonomy of the bureaucracy and democratic control over it; and do our answers differ in an era of democratic backsliding and populism?

Watch recording of the event here

Ben is a public lawyer. His research focuses on the work of the executive and Parliament, the role of officials, and the maintenance of ideals in the grubbiness of organisation. Most recently, he published the third edition of Parliament and the Law (Hart, 2022 with Alex Horne and Louise Thompson)--the only text dealing with Parliament and its relationship to the law--and Leading Works in Public Law (Routledge 2024 with Patrick O'Brien).

Ben joined Durham Law School as an Associate Professor in Public Law and Human Rights in September 2019. He obtained his PhD from the LSE, and LLM from Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand). He previously worked at the Constitution Unit, UCL and was a Teaching Fellow in Public Law at UCL. Ben also worked at the UK Ministry of Justice in 2010 on the UK Cabinet Manual. Prior to joining Durham, Ben was a lecturer in public law at Queen Mary and then at the University of Hull Law School.

Ben has worked on a number of areas, including coalition government, special advisers, legislative governance and parliamentary administration (how legislatures are run), government lawyers and parliamentary lawyers.

Ben has won a number of external grants. He was awarded a Leverhulme Trust research grant in 2016 to carry out an 18 month project examining the provision and reception of legal advice in the 4 legislatures of the UK; in 2021 he was awarded another 14 month Leverhulme Trust research grant to examine parliamentary administration in the same 4 legislatures. He was also co-investigator with Patrick O'Brien (Oxford Brookes) on a British Academy small grant project examining the work of UK judges after they retire.

Ben's current research projects include the bureaucratic impartiality of officials; legislative governance and parliamentary administration; the nature of Parliament; and the role of the civil service in the constitution.

The Current Legal Problems (CLP) lecture series and annual volume was established over fifty five years ago at the Faculty of Laws, University College London and is recognised as a major reference point for legal scholarship.

You can attend this event in-person at UCL Faculty of Laws (Bentham House, 4-8 Endsleigh Gardens, London WC1H 0EG) or alternatively you can join via a live stream.

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