The Law And Privileges Relating To The Attorney General And Solicitor General Of England

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Behind every government there is an impressive team of hard-working lawyers. In Australia, the Solicitor-General leads that team. A former Attorney-General once said, 'The Solicitor-General is next to the High Court and God.' And yet the role of government lawyers in Australia, and specifically the Solicitor-General as the most senior of government lawyers, is under-theorised and under-studied. The Role of the Solicitor-General: Negotiating Law, Politics and the Public Interest goes behind the scenes of government – drawing from interviews with over 45 government and judicial officials – to uncover the history, theory and practice of the Australian Solicitor-General. The analysis reveals a role that is of fundamental constitutional importance to ensuring both the legality and the integrity of government action, thus contributing to the achievement of rule-of-law ideals. The Solicitor-General also works to defend government action and prosecute government policies in the court, and thus performs an important role as messenger between the political and judicial branches of government. But the Solicitor-General's position, as both an internal integrity check on government and an external warrior for government, gives rise to competing pressures: between the law, politics and the public interest. The office of the Solicitor-General in Australia has evolved many characteristics across the almost two centuries of its history in an attempt to navigate these tensions. These pressures are not unique to the Australian context. The understanding of the Australian position provided by this book is informed by, and will inform, comparative analysis of the role of government lawyers across the world.

This book examines lawyers' contributions to creating and maintaining the rule of law, one of the pillars of a liberal democracy. It moves from the European Enlightenment to the modern day, exploring the role of judges, government lawyers, and private practitioners in creating, defining, and being defined by, the demands of modern society. The book is divided into 4 parts representing the big themes. The first part considers lawyers' contribution to the growth of constitutionalism, the second, the formulation of roles and identities, and the third the formation of values. The fourth part focuses on the challenges faced by lawyers and the rule of law in the past 50 years, the neoliberal period, and how they challenge both conceptions of lawyers and the rule of law. Each part is illustrated by defining events, from the execution of Charles I, through the Nuremberg Trials, to the insurrection by supporters of Donald Trump in January 2021. Although the focus is on England and Wales, parallel developments in other jurisdictions, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the USA, are considered. This allows analysis of lawyers' historical and contemporary engagement with the rule of law in jurisdictional systems based on the Common Law. Each chapter is thematic, but the passage through the book is broadly chronological.

This book provides a detailed account of each law officer's functions and draws on that account as the basis for a conceptual analysis of their constitutional legitimacy. In recent years, the constitutional legitimacy of law officers has been questioned repeatedly because of recurring controversies surrounding the discharge of their varied functions. Indeed, it has become increasingly clear that those functions enable law officers to play a highly influential part in the regulation and exercise of public power throughout the United Kingdom. McCormick argues that the most persuasive framework for analysing the offices which make up this diverse regime involves concentrating on the constitutional values of independence, accountability and trust which underpin it. Both aspects of the book – namely the explanation of individual functions and the conceptual analysis of collective legitimacy – are written in a holistic way which encompasses critical analyses about the Attorney General and Solicitor General for England and Wales; the Counsel General for Wales; the Lord Advocate, Solicitor General and Advocate General for Scotland, as well as the Attorney General and Advocate General for Northern Ireland.

The federal Department of Justice was established by John A. Macdonald as part of the Conservative party's program for reform of the parliamentary system following Confederation. Among other things, it was charged with establishing national institutions such as the Supreme Court and the North West Mounted Police and with centralizing the penitentiary system. In the process, the department took on a position of primary importance in post-Confederation politics. This was particularly so up to 1878, when Confederation was "completed." Jonathan Swainger considers the growth and development of the ostensibly apolitical Department of Justice in the eleven years after the union of 1867. Drawing on legal records and other archival documents, he details the complex interactions between law and politics, exploring how expectations both inside and outside the legal system created an environment in which the department acted as an advisor to the government. He concludes by considering the post-1878 legacy of the department's approach to governance, wherein any problem, legal or otherwise, was made amenable to politicized solutions. Unfortunately for the department and the federal government, this left them ill-prepared for the constitutional battles to come. One crucial task was to establish responsibilities within the federal government, rather than just duplicate offices which had existed prior to union. Others were the establishment of national or quasi- national institutions such as the Supreme Court (1875) and the North-West Mounted Police (1873), the redrafting of the Governor-General's instructions (which was done between 1875 and 1877), and centralization of the penitentiary system (completed by 1875). The Department benefited from a deeply rooted expectation that law was both apolitical and necessary. This ideology functioned in a variety of ways: it gave the Department considerable latitude for setting policy and solving problems, but rationalized the appearance of politicized legal decisions. It also legitimized Department officials' claim that it was especially suited to review all legislation, advise on the royal prerogative of mercy, administer national penitentiaries, and appoint judges to the bench. Ultimately, the fictional notion of law as apolitical and necessary placed the Department of Justice squarely in the midst of the completion of Confederation. The Canadian Department of Justice and the Completion of Confederation will be of particular interest to students and scholars of Canadian legal and political history.