Hired Guns and Ministers of Justice: The Role of Government Attorneys in the United States and Israel

What is the role of a government attorney who represents a government agency on judicial review? Most academic literature in the United States (US) advocates the ‘hired gun’ model in which the role of the government lawyer is no different from that of a lawyer who represents a private client (although some academics and government lawyers disagree). The prevailing view in Israel is that government lawyers are ‘ministers of justice’, who owe a primary obligation to the public interest rather than to the client agency. This difference is attributable both to fundamental differences in legal culture between the US and Israel as well as to unique features of the Israeli system of judicial review.