The role of government lawyers in shaping the relationship between government and law

Government lawyers play a role in shaping the relationship between law and government. As that relationship is frequently strained - recent examples include the Dutch childcare benefit scandal, the Integrated Approach to Nitrogen ruling, and the Urgenda rulings -Wubbo Wierenga explored precisely how government lawyers fulfill their role and why. One of his findings is that high-quality legal advice does not inevitably engender legally sound government action. For these professionals, then, the key question is what role they can play to make sure it does. Government lawyers are both lawyers and civil servants: as lawyers they engage in the process of finding the law and as civil servants they try to use the outcome of that process. Through observation, interviews, and a survey, Wierenga collected information about how nearly five hundred Dutch government lawyers fulfill these twin roles, paying particular attention to professional performance, the self-defined work situation, and government lawyers' professional ethics. Ideal-typical roles.