The authority of the First Amendment may transcend the strictures of its original wording, which limits it to proscriptions of federal government suppression of speech. Attempts by some courts to extend First Amendment authority to the workplace is clearly related to the growing criticism of unrestrained managerial dismissal power. The first major…

Application of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to dismissal of public employees has become clarified through such recent federal court litigation as "Loudermill v. Cleveland Board of Education" in 1981, which followed the Supreme Court precedent set in 1972 in "Board of Regents v. Roth." The threshold…