The attorney general is the chief legal adviser to the President and head of the Department of Justice. The attorney general is a member of the President's “inner cabinet” of close advisers, along with the secretaries of defense, state, and Treasury, and is appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. The attorney general also serves as chief legal adviser to heads of executive branch departments, interpreting at their request the laws of the United States. The attorney general publishes interpretations of the Constitution in volumes known as the Opinions of the Attorney General.
The office of attorney general was created by Congress in the Judiciary Act of 1789,and at the request of President George Washington the first attorney general, Edmund Randolph of Virginia, served in the President's cabinet. In 1870 Congress created the Department of Justice and placed the attorney general at its head. Legal officers for the various executive departments were put under the supervision of the Department of Justice, as were U.S. attorneys, clerks, and marshals assigned to federal courts. At that time the solicitor general, the third-ranking official in the Department of Justice, was given the duty of arguing government cases before the Supreme Court, a duty that until then had been exercised by the attorney general.
Attorneys general administer the Justice Department to suit Presidential priorities. President John F. Kennedy even appointed his brother Robert, joking that he wanted his brother to get some legal experience as a government lawyer before entering private practice. President Richard Nixon appointed his campaign manager, John Mitchell, and President Ronald Reagan appointed one of his senior White House aides, Edmund Meese. Many attorneys general are appointed after having served in other cabinet or White House positions, or they move to other positions in the inner cabinet after their tour of duty at the Justice Department. Several have been subsequently named to the Supreme Court; the two most influential in modern times were Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone and Justice Robert Jackson. Janet Reno, the country prosecutor in Dade Country, Florida, appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1993, was the first woman attorney general.
See also Cabinet; Counsel, Office of; Office of Management and Budget
Sources
- Nancy V. Baker, Conflicting Loyalties: Law and Politics in the Attorney General's Office, 1789–1990 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992)
