Department of Justice

The United States Department of Justice (often known as the Justice Department or DOJ), is the United States federal executive department in charge for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent towards the justice or interior ministries of other nations. The Attorney General was initially a one-person, part-time job, established by the Judiciary Act of 1789, but this grew using the bureaucracy. At one time the Attorney General gave legal guidance to the U.S. Congress as well as the President, but this had stopped by 1819 due to the workload involved. In 1867, the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, led by Congressman William Lawrence, made an inquiry into the creation of a “law department” headed by the Attorney Common and consists of the numerous department solicitors and United States attorneys. On February 19, 1868, Lawrence introduced a bill in hard money lenders Congress to produce the Department of Justice. This initial bill was unsuccessful; however, as Lawrence could not devote enough time to ensure its passage owing to his occupation using the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. A second bill was brought to Congress by Rhode Island Representative Thomas Jenckes on February 25, 1870, and each the Senate and House passed the bill. President Ulysses S. Grant then signed the bill into law on June 22, 1870. The Department of Justice officially began operations on July 1, 1870. The “Act to Establish the Department of Justice” bill did little to change the Attorney General’s duties, and his salary and tenure remained the same. The law did create a brand new workplace, that of Solicitor General, to supervise and conduct government litigation in the Supreme Court of the United States. Using the passage of the Interstate Commerce Act in 1887, the federal government started to undertake some law enforcement responsibilities, with the Department of Justice tasked to carry out these duties. In 1884, control of federal prisons was transferred towards the new department, from the Department of Interior. New facilities had been built, microdermabrasion machines which includes the penitentiary at Leavenworth in 1895, and a facility for women located in West Virginia, at Alderson was established in 1924. By 2008 a little number of present and former assistant U.S. attorneys had been alleged to have engaged in criminal conduct which includes sexual battery, sexual abuse of kids, and failures to create mandatory conflict of interest disclosures. 2010 Operation “Fast & Furious” came to light. This was a gun selling, gun trafficking (to Mexico and other nations) and drug trafficking (Mexico into the US with cocaine) operation run thru the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) and overseen by the DOJ. A separate Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) within the DOJ is in charge for investigating lawyer employees of the DOJ who have been charged with misconduct or criminal activity with respect to their professional functions as DOJ attorneys. Former U.S. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft acknowledged challenges facing the Department of Justice. In 2011, they made over110 arrests of the American Mafia. It will be the biggest assault on the mafia ever. On April 15, 2011, the Department of Justice shut down metal detector the three biggest on-line poker networks (Pokerstars, Full Tilt, and Ultimate Bet) and froze billions of dollars of assets owned by the players on the sites without warning or options to cash-out. 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 tankless water heaters 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. Many efforts, none entirely successful, have been made to figure out the meaning of the Latin motto showing up on the Department of Justice seal, Qui Pro Domina Justitia Sequitur. It’s not even known exactly if the original version of the DOJ seal itself was adopted, or when the motto initial 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 honoring former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in 2001.It is also known as “Main Justice.”