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)
“They make a great ado nowadays about hard times; but I think that ... this general failure, both private and public, is rather occasion for rejoicing, as reminding us whom we have at the helm,—that justice is always done. If our merchants did not most of them fail, and the banks too, my faith in the old laws of the world would be staggered.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)