Reading Room Document

The Role of the Attorney General in the Government of the United States

This opinion, written by Ted Olson described the appropriate role of the attorney general in maintaining the separation of powers, explaining that the office’s ultimate goal should be “the preservation of justice,” rather than “the attainment of any particular policy.” Olson also advised that an attorney general should “provide a degree of independence from partisanship,” and serve as “an internal check within the Executive Branch on the partisan and policy impulses of the remainder of the Administration.”

February 10, 1982