United States Department of Justice

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Ministry of Justice
United States Department of Justice

Seal of the Ministry of Justice

Set up: June 22, 1870
Seat: Robert F. Kennedy Building , Washington, DC
Supervisory authority: Seal of the President of the United States.svg President of the United States
minister William Barr
Deputy Jeffrey A. Rosen
Household: $ 29.9 billion (2019)
Employees: 113,114 (2019)
Homepage: www.justice.gov
The Robert F. Kennedy Building of the Department of Justice in Washington

The United States Department of Justice ( English United States Department of Justice , DOJ ) is a Federal Ministry of the United States whose primary responsibility lie in the administration of justice and law enforcement. The United States Attorney General presides over the Department of Justice .

history

Originally, the office of Attorney General was held by a single person. Until 1819, the Attorney General advised both the President and Congress . As the workload increased, many of his original functions were transferred to other officials.

The Legal Committee of the House of Representatives examined the creation of a ministry in 1867 under the leadership of the Attorney General and composed of other state lawyers. The committee chairman William Lawrence presented on February 19, 1868 a bill for a Justice Department to be set up, but did not pursue the proposal because of the impeachment proceedings against US President Andrew Johnson taking place at the same time .

A second draft has been prepared by representatives of Rhode Island , Thomas Jenckes , presented on February 25 1870th After both houses of the US Congress had approved, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the law on June 22, 1870. The new ministry began work on July 1, 1870. The law changed little in the duties of the Attorney General , but created a new office with the Solicitor General , which was responsible for representing the United States in most court cases.

building

The Justice Department building was built in 1935 to a design by Milton Bennett Medary . After Medary's death in 1929, the project was taken over by the other partners in the architectural firm. A building with a total area of ​​more than 92,000 square meters was built on the site in the Federal Triangle between Constitution and Pennsylvania Avenue and Ninth and Tenth Street. The sculptor C. Paul Jennewein was responsible for the interior design of the entire building. In 2001 the building was named after him in memory of the former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy .

construction

guide

Departments

Law enforcement and enforcement

Authorities

Further positions

The United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was dissolved in March 2003 and its tasks were transferred to the newly created Department of Homeland Security . The Executive Office for Immigration Review and the Board of Immigration Appeals remained in place as the authorities responsible for reviewing authority decisions based on immigration and citizenship law within the Department of Justice.

Political selection of new lawyers

In June 2008, according to a report by the US Department of Justice inspector, it became known that since 2002 the Department has used "political or ideological" factors in the selection of its new lawyers. New applicants were therefore checked for conservative or liberal perspectives and then the conservatively oriented applicants were employed “with a significantly higher proportion”. Memberships in liberal organizations such as the American Constitution Society , Greenpeace or the Poverty and Race Research Action Council were classified as particularly negative. Applicants affiliated with the well-known Conservative Federalist Society received particularly positive ratings.

The International Herald Tribune and the New York Times jointly come to the following conclusion:

"For the first time ever, an official investigation showed that many allegations were confirmed by critics who accused the Justice Department of being overly politicized during the Bush administration."

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Office of the Attorney General / Department of Justice . Retrieved February 3, 2019.
  2. Eric Lichtblau: Report sees illegal hiring practices at US Justice Dept. International Herald Tribune , June 24, 2008
  3. Eric Lichtblau: Report Sees Illegal Hiring Practices at Justice Dept. New York Times , June 25, 2008

Web links

Commons : United States Department of Justice  - collection of images, videos, and audio files