This volume explains and evaluates Australia's federal system and the options for reform from various comparative and disciplinary perspectives.

In recent years, controversy has surrounded the role of top government lawyers in the United States and the United Kingdom. Allegations of bad lawyering and bad ethics in public office over the torture memos in the United States and the political pressure placed on the Attorney-General in the United Kingdom to approve the legality of the Iraq war, have seen these relatively obscure group of government lawyers thrust into the public debate. Unlike its Anglo-American contemporaries, Australia s chief legal adviser, the Solicitor-General, has remained largely out of the public eye. This...

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 -...