Prosecuting elected officials for corruption is often an uphill battle. The power and resources of the defendants, combined with the general difficulty of proving corrupt deeds (which usually happen behind closed doors), make it difficult to secure convictions. Moreover, prosecutors who bring charges against elected officials frequently face accusations that the decision to prosecute was politically motivated or biased. Such accusations, which are often fueled by the politicians themselves, have potential grave consequences. Not only can they result in public distrust in particular criminal proceedings against politicians, but also—and perhaps more importantly—these accusations can undermine the legitimacy of the legal system more broadly.

Some public criticism—fair or unfair—of prosecutors is inevitable. However, prosecutors can (and should) try to minimize the harmful effects such criticism might have on the overall legitimacy of the institutions of justice. How can they do so? In a recent and highly recommended article, Ori Aronson, Julia Elad-Strenger, Thomas Kessler, and Yuval Feldman suggest that one way prosecutors can increase the perception that their offices and investigations are objective and unbiased is by refraining from highlighting the personal traits or biographical details of the individuals who lead those offices. To use the jargon of the authors, “non-personalization” of prosecutors’ offices is superior to their “personalization,” at least in terms of offices’ perceived objectivity. The authors base this conclusion on a series of experiments involving reactions to decisions made by Israel’s head of prosecution—former Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit—concerning the corruption allegations against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (a topic that was featured on the blog numerous times; see, for example, here, here, and here).

The Israeli police investigated several separate corruption allegations against Netanyahu, and Mandelblit was in charge of deciding whether these investigations’ findings legally justified the prosecution of Netanyahu. Ultimately, Mandelblit decided to prosecute Netanyahu in three cases, while dismissing Netanyahu’s involvement in a fourth case (which many considered to be the most severe one). All of Mandelblit’s decisions were criticized as politically biased by individuals and media outlets. While Netanyahu’s right-wing allies argued that Mandelblit’s decisions to prosecute were the fruits of his concealed (and unproven) hopes to oust Netanyahu, Netanyahu’s opponents—who are largely supporters of left-wing political parties—suggested that Mandelblit sought to protect Netanyahu and his government by refraining from prosecuting him on the most serious charges.

The researchers conducted a controlled experiment in which participants were randomly exposed to different pieces of information about Mandelblit (varying from his personal background to former professional decisions or statements he made), or, for the control group, to no such information at all. Participants were then randomly asked to review either Mandelblit’s decisions to prosecute Netanyahu in three cases, or his decision not to prosecute him in one case. Lastly, participants were asked to indicate the level of objectivity or fairness they attributed to the Attorney General’s Office. The findings were striking: respondents who were shown personal information about Mandelblit tended to attribute a lower level of objectivity to the Attorney General’s Office, regardless of their own level of support for (or opposition to) Netanyahu, the kind of personal details to which they were exposed, or the nature of Mandelblit’s prosecutorial decisions (“pro-“ or “anti-Netanyahu”). In other words, both Netanyahu supporters and Netanyahu opponents who were exposed to personal information about Mandelblit perceived the Attorney General’s Office as less objective than did respondents who were not exposed to such information, regardless of whether Mandelblit’s decision aligned with their stances toward Netanyahu. According to the authors, their findings “support the thesis that a non-personalized institutional image has a legitimating advantage over the personalization strategy, at least in highly polarizing legal contexts.”

While the argument is generally persuasive, I also want to raise a couple of thoughts I had about this study:

• First, the findings may be quite context dependent. As the authors mention briefly, prior to Mandelblit’s appointment as Attorney General by Netanyahu’s government, he worked for nearly three years as the Netanyahu government’s Cabinet Secretary (a senior role appointed by the government following a nomination by the Prime Minister). During those years, Mandelblit worked closely with Netanyahu, and Netanyahu generally supported his appointment as Attorney General, despite a public outcry over the close ties between the two. Furthermore, Mandelblit chose not to recuse himself from the Netanyahu cases. Given this highly abnormal situation, many in the public would reasonably fear that Mandelblit could not be completely objective in these cases, even if they believe he acted in good faith. It is possible that the respondents in the experiment who were presented with any type of personal information about Mandelblit would have been prompted to recall the highly unusual situation where an Attorney General who had worked so closely with a suspect was in charge of deciding whether and how to prosecute him, and therefore attributed a decreased level of objectivity to the Attorney General’s Office.
• Second, the study focuses on the personalization of the head of a prosecutor’s office, in this case Mandelblit himself. But while Mandelblit was the ultimate decider of the fates of criminal cases against Netanyahu, he was not working alone. Dozens of prosecutors and employees of the Attorney General’s Office—senior and junior—assisted Mandelblit in reaching his decisions. This group of attorneys was quite diverse, including individuals of very different backgrounds and experiences, and their professional evaluation of the evidence against Netanyahu played a central role in the Attorney General’s ultimate decisions. What effect would explaining these facts to the public have on the public’s perceived legitimacy of the office? Would people attribute a higher level of objectivity to institutions where they know that decisions are the product of the work of a diverse group of individuals, and not just one person? Perhaps it is time that institutions whose title misleadingly focuses on their leaders alone—such as the Attorney General’s Office or the State Attorney’s Office—reconsider changing it to a name that reflects the many individuals who work under them and are an essential part of their decisionmaking. Future studies ought to investigate such questions.

While it is important to note these thoughts, I echo the authors’ warning regarding the dangers of negative personal campaigns initiated by powerful criminal defendants or suspects against leaders of prosecutors’ offices. Such campaigns, this article confirmed, are not only unfair to these leaders, but also harmful to the public trust in the legal system.