The Knesset’s Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee is set to continue debates this week on several bills proposing to change how the attorney-general operates.
This package includes nine proposals, one of which, backed by coalition lawmakers, recently passed a preliminary reading in the plenum. These discussions mark the most serious legislative effort in years to formally restructure the role.
The attorney-general currently holds three primary responsibilities: Serving as the government’s chief legal adviser, heading the public prosecution, and representing the state in legal proceedings.
Over decades, Supreme Court rulings and administrative practices have shaped the position into a central legal authority whose opinions are generally treated as binding on government ministries.
This broad mandate does not appear in a single Basic Law; instead, it developed through precedent and institutional custom. A 1998 government commission led by former Supreme Court president Meir Shamgar examined the system. It recommended retaining the unified role, citing Israel’s unique constitutional structure and the importance of centralized legal oversight.
The bills now being debated propose various ways to divide or transfer these functions. Some of the more limited proposals would shift responsibility for criminal cases involving the prime minister, ministers, or MKs from the attorney-general to the State Attorney’s Office.
New proposals, new roles
A second tier of proposals would create a new role – a prosecutor-general. The prosecutor-general would take over all prosecutorial authority. As for the attorney-general, they would remain responsible for legal advice to the government.
The most comprehensive bill – the one that advanced in the preliminary reading – would divide the attorney-general’s current duties into three separate positions. There would be a legal adviser to the government, a head of the prosecution, and a representative of the state in court.
Each role would have its own appointment and removal procedures. Under this model, the binding status of the government’s legal adviser’s opinions would be reduced, and the government could more easily seek external legal representation than under the current structure.
A related piece of the debate concerns legal advisers within ministries. While not identical across all drafts, some legislative proposals and broader coalition plans for restructuring government legal services would change the current protocols for selecting legal advisers.
More to the point, the status would shift from civil-service appointees under the A-G’s professional guidance to advisers appointed more directly by their respective ministers. The exact mechanism varies between proposals.
Supporters of the reforms argue that combining advisory and prosecutorial powers in a single office, as is the case now, creates conflicts of interest and gives one unelected official too much influence. They note that in many other democracies, prosecution and government legal advice are institutionally separate.
Critics point out that Israel’s system lacks some of the structural safeguards found in those countries, and warn that dividing the roles, particularly without strong independent appointment procedures, could weaken oversight of government actions.
The timing of the legislative push has drawn public attention because the current attorney-general, Gali Baharav-Miara, has taken prominent stances in several high-profile legal disputes involving the government. These include matters related to judicial reform legislation, conflict-of-interest rules applying to the prime minister, and state representation in court.
These disagreements have made the Attorney-General’s Office an unusually central part of political discussion, and the proposed restructuring comes at a moment of heightened scrutiny of its authority.
As the committee continues its deliberations, some anticipated topics are the questions of how independent the new roles would be, how they would be appointed and removed, and what legal weight their opinions would carry.
The outcome will determine whether Israel continues with a single, concentrated A-G office or transitions to a model that divides authority among several new legal actors, reflecting a significant potential shift in the country’s legal governance.