![]() Seal of the United States Department of Justice
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![]() Flag of the United States Department of Justice
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Department overview | |
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Formed | July 1, 1870 |
Jurisdiction | Federal government of the United States |
Headquarters | Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building 950 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, D.C., United States 38°53′35.7″N 77°1′29.9″W / 38.893250°N 77.024972°WCoordinates: 38°53′35.7″N 77°1′29.9″W / 38.893250°N 77.024972°W |
Motto | "Qui Pro Domina Justitia Sequitur" (Latin: "Who Pursues For Lady Justice")[1] |
Employees | 113,543 (2012) |
Annual budget | $27.1 billion (2013)[2] |
Department executives | Eric Holder, Attorney General James M. Cole, Deputy Attorney General |
Website | www.justice.gov |
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is the U.S. federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.
The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate and is a member of the Cabinet. The current Attorney General is Eric Holder.
Contents
History
The Attorney General was initially a one-person, part-time job. It was established by the Judiciary Act of 1789, but this grew with the bureaucracy. At one time the Attorney General gave legal advice to the U.S. Congress as well as the President, but this had stopped by 1819 on account of the workload involved.[3]
In 1869, the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, led by Congressman William Lawrence, conducted an inquiry into the creation of a "Law department" headed by the Attorney General and composed of the various department solicitors and United States attorneys. On February 19, 1868, Lawrence introduced a bill in Congress to create the Department of Justice. This first bill was unsuccessful, however, as Lawrence could not devote enough time to ensure its passage owing to his occupation with the Impeachment of President Andrew Johnson.[citation needed]
A second bill was introduced to Congress by Rhode Island Representative Thomas Jenckes on February 25, 1870, and both the Senate and House passed the bill.[citation needed] President Ulysses S. Grant then signed the bill into law on June 22, 1870.[4] The Department of Justice officially began operations on July 1, 1870.[3]
The "Act to Establish the Department of Justice" drastically increased the Attorney General's responsibilities to include the supervision of all United States Attorneys, formerly under the department of the interior, the prosecution of all federal crimes, and the representation of the United States in all court actions, barring the use of private attorneys by the federal government.[5] The law did create a new office, that of Solicitor General, to supervise and conduct government litigation in the Supreme Court of the United States.[citation needed]
With the passage of the Interstate Commerce Act in 1887, the federal government began to take on some law enforcement responsibilities, with the Department of Justice tasked to carry out these duties.[6]
In 1884, control of federal prisons was transferred to the new department, from the Department of Interior. New facilities were built, including the penitentiary at Leavenworth in 1895, and a facility for women located in West Virginia, at Alderson was established in 1924.[7]
In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order which conveyed, to the Department of Justice, the responsibility for the "functions of prosecuting in the courts of the United States claims and demands by, and offsenses [sic] against, the Government of the United States, and of defending claims and demands against the Government, and of supervising the work of United States attorneys, marshals, and clerks in connection therewith, now exercised by any agency or officer....".[8]
Headquarters
The U.S. Department of Justice building was completed in 1935 from a design by Milton Bennett Medary. Upon Medary's death in 1929, the other partners of his Philadelphia firm Zantzinger, Borie and Medary took over the project. On a lot bordered by Constitution and Pennsylvania Avenues and Ninth and Tenth Streets, Northwest, it holds over one million square feet of space. The sculptor C. Paul Jennewein served as overall design consultant for the entire building, contributing more than 50 separate sculptural elements inside and outside.
Various efforts, none entirely successful, have been made to determine the meaning of the Latin motto appearing on the Department of Justice seal, Qui Pro Domina Justitia Sequitur. It is not even known exactly when the original version of the DOJ seal itself was adopted, or when the motto first appeared on the seal. The most authoritative opinion of the DOJ suggests that the motto refers to the Attorney General (and thus to the Department of Justice) "who prosecutes on behalf of justice (or the Lady Justice)".
The building was renamed in honor of former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in 2001. It is sometimes referred to as "Main Justice."[9]
Organization
Leadership offices
- Office of the Attorney General
- Office of the Deputy Attorney General
- Office of the Associate Attorney General
- Office of the Solicitor General
Divisions
- Antitrust Division
- Civil Division
- Civil Rights Division
- Criminal Division
- Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD)
- Justice Management Division (JMD)
- National Security Division (NSD)
- Tax Division
- War Division (defunct)
Law enforcement agencies
Several federal law enforcement agencies are administered by the Department of Justice:
- United States Marshals Service (USMS)
- Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
- Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP)
- Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF)
- Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
- Office of the Inspector General (OIG)
Offices
- Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR)
- Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys (EOUSA)
- Executive Office of the United States Trustee (EOUST)
- Office of Attorney Recruitment and Management (OARM)
- Office of the Chief Information Officer
- In May 2014, the Department appointed Joseph Klimavicz as CIO.[10] Klimavicz succeeds Kevin Deeley, who served as acting CIO since November 2013 when the previous office holder, Luke McCormack, left to take the CIO post at the Department of Homeland Security.[10]
- Office of Dispute Resolution
- Office of the Federal Detention Trustee (OFDT)
- Office of Immigration Litigation
- Office of Information Policy
- Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR)
- Office of Intergovernmental and Public Liaison (merged with Office of Legislative Affairs on April 12, 2012)
- Office of Justice Programs (OJP)
- Office of the Police Corps and Law Enforcement Education
- Office of Legal Counsel (OLC)
- Office of Legal Policy (OLP)
- Office of Legislative Affairs
- Office of the Pardon Attorney
- Office of Privacy and Civil Liberties (OPCL)
- Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR)
- Office of Public Affairs
- Office on Sexual Violence and Crimes against Children
- Office of Tribal Justice
- Office on Violence Against Women
- Professional Responsibility Advisory Office (PRAO)
- United States Attorneys Offices
- United States Trustees Offices
- Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS)
- Community Relations Service
Other offices and programs
- Foreign Claims Settlement Commission of the United States
- INTERPOL, U.S. National Central Bureau
- National Drug Intelligence Center (former)
- Obscenity Prosecution Task Force
- United States Parole Commission
In March 2003, the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service was abolished and its functions transferred to the United States Department of Homeland Security. The Executive Office for Immigration Review and the Board of Immigration Appeals, which review decisions made by government officials under Immigration and Nationality law, remain under jurisdiction of the Department of Justice. Similarly the Office of Domestic Preparedness left the Justice Department for the Department of Homeland Security, but only for executive purposes. The Office of Domestic Preparedness is still centralized within the Department of Justice, since its personnel are still officially employed within the Department of Justice.
In 2003, the Department of Justice created LifeAndLiberty.gov, a website that supported the PATRIOT Act. It was criticized by government watchdog groups.[11]
Finances and budget
The Justice Department was authorized a budget for Fiscal Year 2015 of approximately $21 billion. The budget authorization is broken down as follows:[12]
Program | Funding (in millions) |
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Management and Finance | |
General Administration | $129 |
Justice Information Sharing Technology | $26 |
Administrative Reviews and Appeals
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$351
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Office of the Inspector General | $89 |
United States Parole Commission | $13 |
National Security Division | $92 |
Legal Activities | |
Office of the Solicitor General | $12 |
Tax Division | $109 |
Criminal Division | $202 |
Civil Division | $298 |
Environmental and Natural Resources Division | $112 |
Office of Legal Counsel | $7 |
Civil Rights Division | $162 |
Antitrust Division | $162 |
United States Attorneys | $1,955 |
United States Bankruptcy Trustees | $226 |
Law Enforcement Activities | |
United States Marshals Service | $2,668 |
Federal Bureau of Investigation | $8,347 |
Drug Enforcement Administration | $2,018 |
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives | $1,201 |
Federal Bureau of Prisons | $6,894 |
Interpol-Washington Office | $32 |
Grant Programs | |
Office of Justice Assistance | $1,427 |
Office of Community Oriented Policing Services | $248 |
Office on Violence Against Women | $410 |
Mandatory Spending | |
Mandatory Spending | $4,011 |
TOTAL | $20,978 |
See also
Notes and references
- ^ "DOJ Seal". Department of Justice. U.S. federal government.
- ^ http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2013/assets/justice.pdf
- ^ a b "United States Department of Justice: About DOJ".
- ^ "Public Acts of the Forty First Congress".
- ^ "Act to Establish the Department of Justice". Memory.loc.gov. Retrieved 2012-01-27.
- ^ Langeluttig, Albert (1927). The Department of Justice of the United States. Johns Hopkins Press. pp. 9–14.
- ^ Langeluttig, abby (1927). The Department of Justice of the United States. Johns Hopkins Press. pp. 14–15.
- ^ Executive Order 6166, Sec. 5 (June 12, 1933), at [1].
- ^ Malek, Alia (March 30, 2007). "Partisan Civil Rights: Bush's Long History of Politicizing Justice". Spiegel Online. Retrieved 2009-07-26.
- ^ a b Malykhina, Elena (April 25, 2014). "Justice Department Names New CIO". Government. InformationWeek.
- ^ Dotgovwatch.wom, October 18, 2007
- ^ 2015 Department of Justice Budget Authority by Appropriation, United States Department of Justice, Accessed 2015-07-13
External links
- Official website
- USDOJ in the Federal Register
- Organization chart
- USDOJ Documents Post 9/11 Memos, OIG Reports ...
- 4 Torture Memos Released 16Apr2009 in response to FOIA suit by ACLU.
- Human Rights First; In Pursuit of Justice: Prosecuting Terrorism Cases in the Federal Courts (2009)
- Justice.gov Indictment against internet poker using UIGEA.
- United States Department of Justice collected news and commentary at The Washington Post
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