In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general or attorney-general is the main legal advisor to the government, and in some jurisdictions he or she may also have executive responsibility for law enforcement or responsibility for public prosecutions.
The term is used to refer to any person who holds a general power of attorney to represent a principal in all matters. In the common law tradition, anyone who represents the state, especially in criminal prosecutions, is such an attorney. Although a government may designate some official as the permanent attorney general, anyone who comes to represent the state in the same way is referred to as such, even if only for a particular case.
Famous quotes containing the words attorney and/or general:
“I always was of opinion that the placing a youth to study with an attorney was rather a prejudice than a help.... The only help a youth wants is to be directed what books to read, and in what order to read them.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“The general feeling was, and for a long time remained, that one had several children in order to keep just a few. As late as the seventeenth century . . . people could not allow themselves to become too attached to something that was regarded as a probable loss. This is the reason for certain remarks which shock our present-day sensibility, such as Montaigne’s observation, “I have lost two or three children in their infancy, not without regret, but without great sorrow.””
—Philippe Ariés (20th century)