The Collapse of America’s Most Consequential Institution
Properly conceived, the new Justice Department was to make sure that the promise of the newly amended Constitution extended to real life: “One of the most powerful peace-time forces known to our country,” as Attorney General Robert Jackson memorably put it in a speech.
Key points
- T he Department of Justice’s birthday was not in 1776, when America first declared independence as a nation, or 1788, when the U.S.
- The Reconstruction Amendments, ratified in the years before the department was established, abolished slavery, gave Black men the right to vote, and prohibited any state from denying equal protection of the laws to all Americans.
- It shaped the perimeter of acceptable political expression and association as Americans settled, uneasily, into a competitive two-party democratic system, and it shaped how first- and second-tier citizenship were allocated so strictly by race.
Before America had a Department of Justice, the attorney general was a sort of general counsel for the president and his administration.
[ Quinta Jurecic: DOJ’s try-anything approach ] How DOJ has used its power has been the great shaper of America’s character as a nation.
Additional details
- Homeland Security’s various three- and four-letter agencies have essentially dissolved into an amorphous, masked, pro-Trump secret police force with as little connection to the Article III legal system as they can get away with.
- “This authority has been granted by people who really wanted the right thing done,” and who “wanted the best in our American traditions preserved.” And indeed, when the Justice Department has inserted itself between citizens denied their equal rights and the forces denying those rights, it has been a potent use of the U.S.
- S taffed by C-list podcasters, QAnon-adjacent influencers, weirdo cable-news gadflies, and the kinds of friendless indoor boys who try to choose their own nicknames (see Trump’s first acting U.S.
- When the Department of Justice neglects its unique responsibility and unique capacity to ensure that Americans are equally protected by the law, no substitute force can make up the difference.
- But now, in the midst of a full-fledged authoritarian challenge to the constitutional republic, the Justice Department has entered a whole new phase it has not been through before.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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