The Department of Justice announced the roll out of an updated U.S. Attorneys’ Manual, now titled the Justice Manual. It is the first comprehensive review and overhaul of the manual in more than 20 years.
“This was truly a Department-wide effort, involving hundreds of employees collaborating from many different Department components,” said Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. “To mark this significant undertaking, and to emphasize that the Manual applies beyond the United States Attorneys’ Offices, we have renamed it the Justice Manual. Though the name has changed, the Manual will continue as a valuable means of improving efficiency, promoting consistency, and ensuring that applicable Department policies remain readily available to all employees as they carry out the Department’s vital mission.”
By 2017, many provisions of the manual no longer reflected current law and Department practice. This diminished the manual’s effectiveness as an internal Department resource, and reduced its value as a source of transparency and accountability for the public, the Justice Department said. To bring the manual up to date, employees from around the country, primarily career attorneys, undertook a year-long, top-to-bottom review. The department’s goals were to identify redundancies, clarify ambiguities, eliminate surplus language, and update the manual to reflect current law and practice.
Some specific changes include expanding the Principles of Federal Prosecution to incorporate current charging and sentencing policies, and adding new policies on religious liberty litigation, third-party settlement payments, and disclosure of foreign influence operations.
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