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The question is: What should be the place of the Jedi in a galactic society like the Republic? (Possible spoilers in the latter parts of this post)

Various authors, including Lucas, have provided various answers. In the PT, we see the Jedi as a monastic, communal Order isolated from the citizenry, acting with and through the office of the Supreme Chancellor and the Judicial Department. Ultimately, this situation is the basis for their destruction, as it is exploited by the Sith.

In the OT, the Jedi are scattered hermits living in hiding, many having assimilated into society and raising families or having become hermits. After the end of the Rebellion, the Jedi begin to re-establish but without any formal place or position.

In the first volume of The Corellian Trilogy, Mon Mothma challenges Luke Skywalker to decide what his role and the role of the Jedi will be in a galaxy at peace. She wants to know whether the Jedi will they go back to being an isolated society as their numbers grow, or will they integrate, so that there are Jedi judges, politicians, doctors, soldiers? From an in-universe perspective, it is interesting but not really surprising that this PT character makes this point. Bail Organa might well have felt the same, had he survived.

Destiny's Way provides an answer of sorts to that question. After much infighting within the Jedi during the earlier stages of the New Jedi Order series, Luke re-establishes the Jedi Council under the name of the High Council. The Council is made up of six Jedi and six non-Jedi (the Directors of Civilian and Military Intelligence, two Senators, the Chief of State and the Commander of the NR Defence Force). Prior to this, Luke proposed to Cal Omas, the new Chief of State, that the Jedi be a 'Special Investigation Service', the people you send 'when you need more muscle than a diplomat and less than a battle cruiser'.

This is at least in part in response to the opposing candidate Fyor Rodan's view that the Jedi should have no official role whatsoever unless they submit to being treated the same way as everyone else, with no special privileges. Rodan viewed the Jedi as a special interest group, nothing more, who tried to do the jobs that trained professionals should be doing. He questioned the effectiveness of the Jedi and opposed the Jedi Council as an elite power group within the government.

At its first meeting the Council frees the Jedi to fight the Yuuzhan Vong however they wish within the tenets of the Jedi Code, whether as covert operatives assisting refugees and gathering intel or as front-line personnel helping to coordinate the military. (Notably, the point is made that Jedi engaged in the 'Jedi battle meld', while taking orders from their military commander, will actually be controlling the forces under them - i.e. the forces will be answering not directly to their commander, but to the Jedi because of the meld. The point is made because some Council members are worried about the Bothan Admiral Kre'fey going off on a genocidal crusade. The meld also offers some insurance against individual Jedi going dark due to the stress of battle.)

My question is: Is this the way for the Jedi to go? Does it make sense? On the face of it I think it avoids the vulnerability established by the isolation of the Old Republic Jedi Order. But do the Jedi really need a governing body? Can they be trusted without one? Should they integrate to the extent that Mon Mothma suggested? Should they be subverted to the will of the State, as Fyor Rodan suggested? Or should they have an even more formal State-mandated membership structure, perhaps even as extreme as the Psi Corps from Babylon 5?

I haven't read The Swarm War or The Legacy of the Force series, so I don't know how this plays out in the long term. I don't mind spoilers, but please indicate whether you are giving them in case others do.

You didn't say anything about the Legacy Comics, which takes place long after Luke & Co's deaths, but I'm assuming that's because you aren't aware of them. So Spoilers Ahead:

I actually prefer the Legacy Comic setup for Jedi, they no longer hold any affiliation with any single government. They just help people, whatever their affiliation and are not restrained by who's the enemy of their government.

This is in contrast with the Imperial Knights, who protect and serve the Emperor and the Empire exclusively, and while not antagonistic with the Jedi, they have more of a neutral rivalry, each seeing the other as misinformed but not a threat.

The Jedi seem to be born to a moral authority beyond goverment, tolerated by goverment for some of the things they can do. Armed priests with the power of god behind them, if you will.

Since the Jedi indeed follow the path of light, it seems a good way to do it. The Jedi of the late Republic era fell only because the Force more or less turned against them after they grew stagnant.

That's my take on it anyways. How else would a civilization use a bunch of what? demigods who wish to serve the populace but to give them tacid permission to do as such under the auspice of the goverment.[/b][/code]

Well, if you want to eschew personal preferences in exchange for what must be Star Wars truth, then it's always what Lucas says. However, just because the Jedi were once as you said "a monastic, communal Order isolated from the citizenry, acting with and through the office of the Supreme Chancellor and the Judicial Department" does not mean that that position is static. Indeed, in the KOTOR games, the Jedi Order and more specifically the Jedi Council seem to be much more removed from the workings of the Republic, enforcing things that have gone horribly wrong, but otherwise keeping only their own council and following a course of action that often parallels that of the Republic, but rarely interacts with it directly. Luke's newer order seems to be much more hands-on, but in my opinion, we'd need to seem them more at a point of noncrisis before properly assessing their role in the New Republic.

Shannon wrote:Luke proposed to Cal Omas, the new Chief of State, that the Jedi be a 'Special Investigation Service', the people you send 'when you need more muscle than a diplomat and less than a battle cruiser'.

This is exactly how the Jedi are shown and use in TPM. Nothing new.

Shannon wrote: Destiny's Way provides an answer of sorts to that question. After much infighting within the Jedi during the earlier stages of the New Jedi Order series, Luke re-establishes the Jedi Council under the name of the High Council. The Council is made up of six Jedi and six non-Jedi (the Directors of Civilian and Military Intelligence, two Senators, the Chief of State and the Commander of the NR Defence Force). Prior to this, Luke proposed to Cal Omas, the new Chief of State, that the Jedi be a 'Special Investigation Service', the people you send 'when you need more muscle than a diplomat and less than a battle cruiser'.

The Jedi Council under Luke is a more dangerous animal though. They're an advisory council(according to Omas) but in this capacity, they have the ability to officially influence Republic politics, something that the Jedi council of old tried to eschew.

Thanks for your replies everyone. Unfortunately, work et al have prevented me from getting back to this til now.

No, I wasn't aware of the Legacy comics. Having since checked them out on Wookieepedia, I find the concept of the Imperial Knights interesting because it gives yet another option - an order of psuedo-Jedi absolutely devoted to the service of their ruler without the homicidal/tyrannical trappings of the Sith.

Basically what I was asking in the OP was: how much should the Jedi cosy up to the government of the day? Of course that depends on the government in question, but what I suppose I'm really concerned about is whether the Jedi should be associated with the government AT ALL, or remain completely independent, as seems to be the case both in KOTOR and in Legacy.

I had not really considered what had happened to the OR Jedi as 'the Force turning against them', but I guess that makes sense, the Force acting as it did through the Sith and the Chosen One. I guess it all depends on the view you take of the nature of the Force and how much intention/will you ascribe to it. I was never really fully on board with the whole 'Will of the Force ' idea, though given the amount of predestination in the SW-verse, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that that's how GL intends it.

A Jedi theocracy would be interesting...maybe not the best government, but interesting. The hereditary nature of the Force would quickly turn such a government into an oligarchy. Still, the nature of the Jedi Order - the requirements for self sacrifice, and the role of the Jedi as essentially a servant might make the experiment viable in the short term, before stratification ( like what happened to the Jedi Order in the Old Republic) sets in. A story set in the Jedi Theocracy has potential.

There is also another angle to consider: How much can a government afford to allow the Jedi free reign? What would you think the government, today, ought to do if suddenly these Force wielding demigods started showing up in real life? I think that in the aftermath of multiple galaxy spanning wars caused by renegade force users, the galactic government has no real choice but to keep very close watch on all Force users. At the very least all government personal (civilian and military) should be tested for Force Sensitivity. The Jedi might be used by the government for "more than a diplomat but less than a battlecruiser" work among other things, but the Order's primary function, at least in the eyes of the government, is to provide a place where potential force-wielding threats can be harnessed, pacified, and watched.