Born in Tel Aviv, he earned his bachelor's (1969) and master's (1974) degrees from Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and launched a career in law, serving as a legal advisor to the ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs during the mid-1970s. His diplomatic career started in 1977, as from then through 1979 he was a member of Israel's delegation to the peace talks with Egypt that led to the signing of the Camp David Accords between the two countries. Upon their completion, he became in 1980 an Assistant Director-General of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in charge of implementing the normalization of relations with Egypt.
During the early 1980s he served in a variety of capacities in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and in 1985-1986 served as Deputy Chief of Mission for the Israeli embassy in the United States. Following this term he served in various roles relating to US-Israeli relations.
In 1991 he was again a member of an Israeli peace negotiating team, travelling as part of the Israeli delegation to the Madrid Peace Conference that opened the negotations (for which he served as chairman of the Israeli delegation) that would eventually lead to the 1993 Oslo peace accords, a major breakthrough in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Following the conclusion of these talks, he chaired the Israeli delegation to peace talks with Jordan, which concluded successfully with the 1994 peace treaty with Jordan.
He then turned towards domestic Israeli jurisprudence, serving as a judge on Jerusalem's District Court from 1995 to 1997, and then being appointed Israel's Attorney General, a position he continues (as of August 2003) to hold. Throughout his career he has written several books on Israel's Supreme Court and especially focusing on the relation of Judaism to Israeli political and legal life. In this role he has gained a reputation for being somewhat of a liberal reformer, going up against the established might of Orthodox Judaism in favor of religious pluralism to represent all factions of Judaism. His most important success in this endeavor has been to gain Reform and Conservative Judaism seats on Jerusalem's religious council, previously controlled entirely by the Orthodox. More recently, he has proposed opening a section of the Western Wall for non-Orthodox religious services, but this has not yet been successful.