Public Sentinels: A Comparative Study of Australian Solicitors-General

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 collection provides a rare and overdue insight into a fundamental public institution in all Australian jurisdictions. It provides a historical, theoretical, practical and comparative perspective of this little known, but vitally important, office at a time when the transparency and accountability of government has taken on an increased significance. Of interest to anyone interested in the integrity of government, the book will be particularly useful to government, political parties and the academy. It will also be a valuable reference work to those working towards a redefinition of the role of top government legal advisors.

The editors, Gabrielle Appleby, Patrick Keyzer and John Williams, have a large culmination of editorial experience and have published extensively in constitutional law, legal history and the judicial system. Dr Gabrielle Appleby is Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales Law School, Australia. She researches in public and constitutional law, focussing on the accountability of the exercise of public power. She has published widely in these fields, including Australian Public Law (Oxford University Press, 2011) and The Future of Australian Federalism: Comparative and Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Cambridge University Press, 2012). Patrick Keyzer is Professor of Law and Director of the Centre for Law, Governance and Public Policy at Bond University. He writes a text, casebook and Halsbury's title on the topic of Australian constitutional law and appears regularly in Australian superior courts in constitutional cases. Professor John M. Williams is Dean of the Adelaide Law School at the University of Adelaide. His main research interest is public law and in particular Australian constitutional law, the High Court of Australia, comparative constitutional law, federalism and legal history.