The Reagan Adminstration justified its civil rights enforcement by claiming an electoral mandate to reduce government. The Administration employed an administrative strategy to fulfill this asserted mandate, illustrating the conventional wisdom that the strategy enhances political responsiveness. But responsiveness to popular will is one democratic value, while protection of minority rights another. In the case of the administrative strategy to enforce the law protecting civil rights of the institutionalized, career employees within the Reagan Justice Department reacted forcefully to the...