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The Creation Of The Department Of Justice: Professionalization Without Civil Rights Or Civil Service, Jed H. Shugerman
The Creation Of The Department Of Justice: Professionalization Without Civil Rights Or Civil Service, Jed H. Shugerman
Faculty Scholarship
This Article offers a new interpretation of the founding of the Department of Justice in 1870 as an effort to shrink and professionalize the federal government. The traditional view is that Congress created the DOJ to increase the federal government’s capacity to litigate a growing docket as a result of the Civil War, and more recent scholarship contends that Congress created the DOJ to enforce Reconstruction and ex-slaves’ civil rights. However, it has been overlooked that the DOJ bill eliminated about one third of federal legal staff. The founding of the DOJ had less to do with Reconstruction, and more …