"SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY?" ON GOVERNMENT LAWYERS AND THEIR ROLE IN PROMOTING SOCIAL CHANGE: THE ISRAELI EXAMPLE

Among cause lawyers, it is common to characterize government lawyers in negative tones. Both in the United States and in Israel they are often perceived as the servants of the regime, providing it with legal tools to protect its policies. Therefore, government lawyers are often marked as obstacles for the promotion of social change agents of the status quo rather than agents of change. This Note suggests a different approach. By analyzing the current literature on the role of government lawyers, this Note stresses not only the complexity of this role, but also its relative flexibility, which emerges from its unique structure and its position between the courts, the government, and the public. This flexibility, as will be argued, provides government lawyers with greater capabilities to affect and influence policy. These characteristics may provide incentives for cause lawyers to find ways to cooperate with government lawyers. Through a case study of one department at the Israeli Ministry of Justice (the Israeli High Court of Justice department), the Note provides an example of how working with government lawyers can assist cause lawyers in overcoming some of the inherent obstacles in traditional cause lawyering strategies. By integrating innovative mechanisms of cooperation into these strategies, cause lawyers may increase their potential success in promoting social change. This case study functions as both an example and a challenge: an example of how-cooperation between cause and government lawyers may better serve the public interest, and a challenge for cause and government lawyers in other jurisdictions around the globe aiming to achieve similar goals.