United States Department of Justice

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**Dept. of Justice**
Image:Doj.png
Established:	June 22, 1870
Activated:	July 1, 1870
Attorney General:	Alberto Gonzales
Deputy Atty. Gen.:	Paul McNulty
Budget:	$22.2 billion (2005)
Employees:	112,557 (2005)

Justice Department redirects here. For other meanings of the term, see Department of Justice.

The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) is a Cabinet department in the United States government designed to enforce the law and defend the interests of the United States according to the law and to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans (see Template:Usc). The DOJ is administered by the United States Attorney General (see Template:Usc), one of the original members of the cabinet.

1 History
2 Organization
3 See also
4 External links

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History

Initially the Attorney General was a one-person, part-time job, established by the Judiciary Act of 1789, but this grew with the bureaucracy. At one time the Attorney General gave legal advice to U.S. Congress as well as the President, but this had stopped by 1819 on account of the workload involved.

In 1867, the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, led by 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 district 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.

At last, eighty-one years after the establishment of the Office of the Attorney General, the Department of Justice was established. 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. President Ulysses S. Grant signed the bill into law on June 22, 1870. Officially, the Department of Justice began operations on July 1, 1870.

The bill, called the "Act to Establish the Department of Justice", did little to change the Attorney General's responsibilities, and his salary and tenure remained the same. 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.

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)".

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Organization

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Offices

Executive Office for Immigration Review
Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys (EOUSA)
Executive Office for U.S. Trustees
Office of Attorney Recruitment and Management
Office of the Chief Information Officer
Office of Dispute Resolution
Office of the Federal Detention Trustee
Office of Information and Privacy
Office of the Inspector General
Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR)
Office of Intergovernmental and Public Liaison
Office of Justice Programs (OJP)
- Bureau of Justice Assistance
- Bureau of Justice Statistics
- Community Capacity Development Office
- National Criminal Justice Reference Service
- National Institute of Justice
- Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
- Office of the Police Corps
- Office for Victims of Crime
Office of Legal Counsel (OLC)
Office of Legal Policy (OLP)
Office of Legislative Affairs
Office of the Ombudsperson
Office of the Pardon Attorney
Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR)
Office of Public Affairs
Office of Tribal Justice
Office on Violence Against Women
Professional Responsibility Advisory Office (PRAO)
United States Attorneys Offices
United States Trustees Offices

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Community programs

Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS)
Community Relations Service

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Other offices and programs

Foreign Claims Settlement Commission of the United States
INTERPOL, U.S. National Central Bureau
National Drug Intelligence Center
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 jursidiction of the Department of Justice. Similarly the Office of Domestic Preparedness left the Justice Department for the Department of Homeland Security.

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