Talk:Solicitor General of Brazil

Title
In Portuguese, this office is called "Advocacia-Geral da União" and its holder is called "Advogado-Geral da Uniao". I believe that a better translation for this position would be "Advocate-General" instead of "Solicitor-General". The term "Advocate-General", although not very familiar to the US system, has been used in other jurisdictions, such as Her Majesty's Advocate General for Scotland. Is is well established in the French, Dutch, and some other continental European legal systems, even though their attributions are different if compared to the Brazilian Advocate-General. Besides that, there is the position of the "Procurador-Geral da Uniao", who reports to the Advocate-General. I believe that the "Procurador-Geral da Uniao" would be better translated as "Solicitor-Geral",

I'd rather keep the former expression.....
In English, the word advocate is rather a generic and informal term used to define anyone who advocates or intercedes in favor of something or someone, but not necessarily a lawyer. Thus, the Portuguese word advogado cannot be translated into English as advocate, but rather as lawyer, attorney, counsel, barrister or even solicitor, which are the legal terms often used in English to designate bar bachelors-in-law. Ideed, the word advocate might be mistaken for functions similar to lobbyists, since the term "advocacy" is usually used in the political context in the English language.

If you take a glance at English-speaking countries' legal systems, you will notice that almost none of of them (except only for this Scottish example, possibly) use the term advocate to refer to any category of lawyer, especially the ones who hold public positions. Also, examples taken from French and Dutch are not quite reliable. The French word "advocat", for instance, may well be translated as lawyer, just like the Portuguese term "advogado". It's not the similitude or the resemblance that defines the best translation, but the usage of the term in its original language's background.

Otherwise, if you assume the same reasoning for the rest of the expression "Advogado-Geral da União", you would end up translating "União" as Union, which is something totally different. União is the word used in Portuguese to mean the Federation as a whole unit, that is, the Federal Government. In English, it's rather used to refer to associations, especially trade-unions. See my point?

Last, but not least, I'd like to make some comments on the jobs performed by the head of AGU - the "Advogado-Geral da União" - and the "Procurador-Geral da União". Actually, both are lawyers and solicitors, for both represent the Federal Government (Executive Branch) in court. The difference is that the latter is not allowed to represent before the Brazilian supreme court. This attribution is reserved only to the chief solicitor - the Solicitor-General. On the other hand, the chief solicitor in AGU is allowed to represent before any court, even replacing his subordinates, if anyhow it becomes politically necessary or convenient. Besides, AGU has other chief positions below the Solicitor-General besides the "Procurador-Geral da União", which do theirs jobs at local courts. The only reason why the "Procurador-Geral da União" is also called "general" is because he is the top solicitor under the solicitor-general, and he is in the same hierarchy as another authority in the institution called "Consultor-Geral da União" (Advisor-General), which is in charge only of advising cabinet members, but does not act as a solicitor, pleading in court. Both are deputies of the Solicitor-General.

These authorities are all federal attorneys, in the general sense of the expression, and the only reason why I did not use the very same expression (Federal Attorney-General) for the head of the institution is because this term could mislead the reader to take him for an equivalent to the Attorney-General in the USA legal system.

As well known, the Attorney-General in the United States is the chief position of prosecutors. Prosecution in Brazil is made by another institution, and that's why the expression "Attorney-General" would not fit to the Brazilian Solicitor-General. In Brazil, we have three independent institutions which in the US could be considered under the authority of the Attorney-General: The Attorney-General (prosecution), the Minister os Justice (which commands the federal police), and the Solicitor-General (public counsel/lawyer). In the US the Solicitor-General is the third rank in the Department of Justice, under the Attorney-General and the Deputy Attorney-General, and, despite this administrative subordination, he has a certain technical independence from these authorities when it comes to decide what to defend in court and how to do it, usually called the power of confession of judgment. The Brazilian Solicitor-General has this very same power, and is totally independent from the Minister of Justice (a cabinet member) and the Attorney-General (chief prosecutor).

If you defend to pick off the word solicitor, I would suggest to use the term "Lawyer-General" instead, but not advocate, for the reasons above. But I strongly recommend to keep the former expression, because of its trait of expressing the one who may appear in court to act as a lawyer. The word lawyer does not have this peculiarity, it's more generic, just like barrister or counsel.

As an ultimate option, I'd also suggest to keep the Portuguese expression not translated.

I will wait some days for other wiki's replies (or yours), if no one else opposes, I will respectfully refuse the changes, okay? Osirisvp 19:10, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I've made a few changes to the page just to polish the English. Re: Osirisvp's comments about advocates, lawyers, counsels, barriesters and lawyers, 'generic is as generic does' is the watchword in any language and it is context and pragmatics that are crucial. In England and Wales a 'barrister' may practise in a crown court whereas a 'solicitor' may only practise in County courts and magistrates' courts. As far as the English term 'Union' not being the same as the Portuguese 'União', I beg to differ. In the US, the president makes a 'State of the Union' address and there was a civil war between Union forces and the rebels and, in the UK, the constitutional position of the 'Union' of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a vexing one. As for 'Solicitor-General' and 'Advocate-General', they both work in English - believe me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dikaiosynenemesis (talk • contribs) 19:02, 1 June 2010 (UTC)


 * See comment below regarding the title, but (inter alia) your reasoning on Union is wrong as well. There's nothing at all the matter with using "Union" to refer to a federal government and, in plain fact, it is what the federal gov't of the United States was called during its Civil War. — Llywelyn II   00:29, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Merge to Attorney General of Brazil
Per common English usage and the actual Brazilian government, the name of this office is the "Attorney General of the Union" or (for us, to dab other AGs) "Attorney General of Brazil".

The current page is obviously an (overly-wordy) OR translation (see above) and there is absolutely nothing at www.brazil.gov.br that uses our neologism. Even the Luís Inácio Adams page here at Wiki uses "Attorney General".

(There is a Bra-US Council page that uses "Solicitor General" with no hyphen, but it seems to be a similar one-off translation: Attorney General is far more common... and official.) — Llywelyn II   00:29, 20 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Do you want to merge the two pages? You're absolutely correct on the above points. Also, both pages point to a single Portuguese-language article. Prburley (talk) 18:19, 13 November 2014 (UTC)