ABSTRACT

The modern relationship between the two officers, is a product of the evolution of Australia's legal and political systems. This chapter explores the story of how the office of First Law Officer has evolved in Australia. The story of how the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General each became political offices and then diverged one continuing as a political office and one becoming a non-political office illustrates how the relationship between the First and the Second Law Officer had evolved in Australia to that point in time. In practice the legal professional tasks associated with the First Law Officer have devolved to the Second Law Officer either through specific delegation or through machinery of government arrangements for the provision of high-level legal services adopted by the executive government in each Australian jurisdiction. Three titles Attorney-General, Solicitor-General and Minister of Justice have survived since the establishment of representative and responsible government in the Australian colonies in the second half of the nineteenth century.