Office and profession in the design of modern institutions

Abstract:Office and profession represent two distinct modes by which work can be regulated. The first has a primarily instrumental logic, which aims to align the private interests of the office-holder with the desired function of the office nexus. The second involves a distinctly anti-instrumentalist commitment, which is supposed to prevent the complete instrumentalization of professional expertise by clients and bureaucracies. This article considers the conjunction of office and profession as an element of institutional design of the sort found in the modern judiciary, the hospital, and the university. After analysing the useful tension that can be achieved by having office-holders who are also professionals, it then explains why recent social developments have put this mechanism under considerable strain in a way that should be a cause for concern for public lawyers and legal theorists.