DOJ Justice Manual API: 1,548 Sections of Federal Prosecution Policy

Short answer: the DOJ Justice Manual is in the corpus as 1,548 sections across 9 Titles, under corpusType=AGENCY_GUIDANCE with source=doj_justice_manual, cited the way DOJ cites it (Justice Manual 9-27.420). It is the Department's own internal policy, and the Department says plainly that it creates no rights and cannot be relied on by a defendant. That combination is what makes it worth querying. It is not law, and it is still the most reliable published statement of how a federal prosecutor is instructed to decide.

TL;DR

• 1,548 sections, 9 Titles, retrievable by citation and searchable as full text. Titles run from Organization and Functions through Criminal.
• It binds prosecutors, not courts. JM 1-1.200 says it "is not intended to, does not, and may not be relied upon to create any rights, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law by any party in any matter, civil or criminal."
• It still controls internally. The same section says that where the Justice Manual conflicts with earlier DOJ statements of policy, the Justice Manual controls.
• Two antitrust neighbors ship with it: the 2023 DOJ and FTC Merger Guidelines (merger_guidelines, 1 document, 128 retrieval passages) and the DOJ Antitrust Division Leniency Policy (doj_leniency, 1 document, 8 passages).
• Documents and retrieval passages are different units. Across the whole corpus that is 4,150,839 distinct sections indexed as 12,003,716 passages. One long policy document is one citable item split into many searchable chunks.
• No point in time query. One text per citation, the one in force now, and no as_of=DATE to reach behind it. You get amendment history, a yearFrom/yearTo filter, and change events per refresh.

Part of our federal agency guidance series, which maps all 34 sub-regulatory sources.

For related coverage, see Federal Agency Guidance API: 34 Sub-Regulatory Sources in One Endpoint, Export Controls API: BIS Advisory Opinions and DDTC Commodity Jurisdiction Determinations for a regime DOJ charges under, and NLRB Memoranda API: General Counsel and Division of Advice Memos, Queryable for the same pattern in labor law.

What the Justice Manual is

The Justice Manual is the Department of Justice's published internal rulebook. JM 1-1.100 puts it in one line: the Manual "publicly sets forth internal Department of Justice (DOJ) policies and procedures."

It was previously the United States Attorneys' Manual and was comprehensively revised and renamed in 2018. It is maintained under the supervision of the Attorney General and the direction of the Deputy Attorney General, with an Editor-in-Chief authorized to approve changes (JM 1-1.200).

Nine Titles, each a different practice area.

Title 9 is where most investigations work lives. Verified chapters in Title 9 include 9-11.000 Grand Jury, 9-27.000 Principles of Federal Prosecution, 9-28.000 Principles of Federal Prosecution of Business Organizations, 9-44.000 Health Care Fraud, 9-47.000 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, 9-48.000 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and the forfeiture chapters running from 9-111.000 through 9-121.000.

The weight question, which is the interesting part

Here is the tension, stated by DOJ itself in two places.

JM 1-1.200: the Justice Manual "provides internal DOJ guidance. It is not intended to, does not, and may not be relied upon to create any rights, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law by any party in any matter, civil or criminal."

JM 9-27.150, the Non-Litigability provision, goes further. The Principles of Federal Prosecution "are intended solely for the guidance of attorneys for the government," create no right or benefit enforceable at law, and "may not be relied upon by a party to litigation with the United States." The comment says the explicit statement exists to foreclose efforts to litigate the validity of prosecutorial actions alleged to be at variance with the principles, and that if someone tries, the government attorney "should oppose the attempt."

So you cannot move to dismiss because a prosecutor departed from JM 9-28.300.

And yet the same document says something else. JM 1-1.200: "When the Justice Manual conflicts with earlier DOJ statements of policy or procedure, the Justice Manual controls."

Both things are true at once, and that is why the Manual is worth having in a system.

A judge will not enforce it for your client. A supervising prosecutor will apply it to your client. JM 9-27.140 lets United States Attorneys modify or depart from the principles, which tells you the baseline exists and departures are a known event rather than the norm.

If you are preparing a Wells-style presentation or a declination pitch, the Manual is the scoring rubric. JM 9-28.300 sets out the factors to be considered in corporate prosecutions. JM 9-28.700 treats cooperation as a mitigating factor. JM 9-28.720 covers disclosing the relevant facts as the eligibility condition for cooperation credit. JM 9-28.800 covers compliance programs and 9-28.900 covers voluntary self-disclosures.

You are not citing those to a court. You are citing them to the person who decides.

Documents versus retrieval passages

This is the API detail that trips up developers reading the coverage numbers, and the two antitrust sources make it concrete.

The 2023 Merger Guidelines are one document indexed as 128 retrieval passages. The DOJ Antitrust Division Leniency Policy is one document indexed as 8 passages.

One citable item. Many searchable chunks.

A "section" in this corpus is one citable item with a stable actId. A USC section, a CFR section, a Justice Manual section like 9-27.420. A "retrieval passage" is a chunk of that item, sized so hybrid search returns a relevant span instead of a 40 page PDF.

Long documents split into several passages. That is why the corpus totals are 4,150,839 distinct sections indexed as 12,003,716 retrieval passages, roughly three passages per section on average.

The practical consequences:

• A count of 1 is not a coverage gap. merger_guidelines showing one document means the Merger Guidelines are a single document, not that we have one of many.
• Search returns passages, retrieval returns the item. Get the actId from search, then call the section endpoint for the whole thing.
• Do not compute coverage from search result counts. Use GET /us/statutes/coverage, which is free and reports per jurisdiction counts, a freshness array declaring pauses with reasons, a currency block, and a measuredAt timestamp.

The two antitrust neighbors

The 2023 Merger Guidelines were jointly released by DOJ and the FTC on December 18, 2023, and DOJ's Antitrust Division describes them as "a non-binding statement that provides transparency on aspects of the deliberations the Agencies undertake in individual cases under the antitrust laws" (justice.gov, 2023 Merger Guidelines page, checked August 2026).

Same shape as the Justice Manual. Not law, published anyway, and the closest thing to a written statement of how the reviewing agency will think.

The Antitrust Division Leniency Policy is the corporate self-disclosure track for cartel conduct. DOJ's Leniency Policy page states the policy is tailored to price fixing, bid rigging, and market allocation crimes in violation of 15 U.S.C. § 1, and that the Leniency Policy and Procedures are included in the Justice Manual's criminal antitrust enforcement chapter (March 2024 version, checked August 2026).

That last part is a nice illustration of why both live in the same 34-source guidance corpus. The leniency policy is a standalone document and a Justice Manual chapter at the same time. Query them together.

Worked queries

Search costs 4 credits per call. Base is https://api.vaquill.ai/api/v1, auth is Authorization: Bearer vq_key_....

Scope to the Justice Manual only:

curl -X POST https://api.vaquill.ai/api/v1/us/statutes/search \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer vq_key_..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "query": "factors weighed in charging a business organization",
    "corpusType": "AGENCY_GUIDANCE",
    "source": "doj_justice_manual",
    "limit": 20
  }'

Scope to one Title. Justice Manual citations carry the Title in the number itself, so a Title 9 query is a phrase-scoped query on the citation prefix plus your substantive terms. The browse hierarchy recipe covers walking a tree like this:

{
  "query": "9-28 corporate compliance program evaluation",
  "corpusType": "AGENCY_GUIDANCE",
  "source": "doj_justice_manual",
  "matchType": "all",
  "limit": 25
}

Query the three DOJ policy sources at once, which is what you want when the question is "how will DOJ think about a self-disclosure here":

{
  "query": "voluntary self-disclosure cooperation credit declination",
  "corpusType": "AGENCY_GUIDANCE",
  "source": ["doj_justice_manual", "doj_leniency", "merger_guidelines"],
  "matchType": "any",
  "limit": 50
}

Three behaviors worth knowing before you wire this into anything:

• Unknown filter values return 422, not silence. A typo in source fails loudly, and the error message lists every valid code, so the API documents itself.
• Paging is cut from one ranking. Results never repeat or go missing between pages, and a later page costs no more than the first.
• Failed calls are not charged.

Who this is wrong for

If you want case law, this is the wrong corpus. The Justice Manual tells you what prosecutors are told to do, not what courts have held.

If you need to reconstruct the exact text of JM 9-28.300 as it stood on a specific day in 2021, this is the wrong corpus: a citation returns its live text and nothing earlier, and no historical query exists.

If you just want to read one section once, justice.gov publishes the whole Manual for free and you should use it.

It earns its place when a system needs prosecution policy sitting next to statutes and regulations in one query surface with stable ids, so a compliance workflow or an internal research agent, following the compliance mapping recipe, can move from 18 U.S.C. to the charging policy to the Sentencing Guidelines that set the exposure without a person copying citations between four websites.

The collection layer is published at open-us-law.

FAQ

Is the DOJ Justice Manual binding law?

No. JM 1-1.200 states that the Manual provides internal DOJ guidance and is not intended to, does not, and may not be relied upon to create any rights, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law by any party in any matter, civil or criminal. It binds DOJ attorneys internally as Department policy, and it controls over earlier DOJ policy statements that conflict with it.

Can a defendant enforce the Justice Manual in court?

No. JM 9-27.150 says the Principles of Federal Prosecution are intended solely for the guidance of government attorneys and may not be relied upon by a party to litigation with the United States. The accompanying comment states that if a party tries to litigate a variance from the principles, the government attorney should oppose the attempt.

Why is the Justice Manual worth querying if it is not law?

Because it is what line prosecutors are instructed to follow. It is the most reliable published statement of how a charging, plea, or corporate resolution decision will actually be made, which is exactly what you want when the audience for your argument is a prosecutor rather than a judge.

How is the Justice Manual cited?

By Title and section number, for example Justice Manual 9-27.420 on the considerations weighed in a plea agreement. The first digit before the hyphen is the Title, so anything beginning 9- is in the Criminal Title. The corpus preserves that citation form.

How many sections and Titles does the Justice Manual have here?

1,548 sections across 9 Titles, retrievable under corpusType=AGENCY_GUIDANCE with source=doj_justice_manual. Titles run from 1 (Organization and Functions) through 9 (Criminal).

What is the difference between a document and a retrieval passage?

A document, or section, is one citable item with a stable actId. A retrieval passage is a chunk of that item sized for semantic search. The 2023 Merger Guidelines are one document indexed as 128 passages, and across the whole corpus 4,150,839 sections are indexed as 12,003,716 passages.

Are the 2023 Merger Guidelines binding?

No. DOJ's Antitrust Division describes them as a non-binding statement that provides transparency on aspects of the agencies' deliberations, and says the agencies continue to decide individual matters on the law and facts of each case. They were jointly released by DOJ and the FTC on December 18, 2023.

What does the DOJ Antitrust Division Leniency Policy cover?

Corporate and individual self-disclosure of cartel conduct. DOJ states the Corporate Leniency Policy is specifically tailored to price fixing, bid rigging, and market allocation crimes in violation of 15 U.S.C. § 1, and that its requirements and benefits differ from the other voluntary self-disclosure policies used elsewhere in the Department.

Can I get the Justice Manual as it read on a past date?

Versioning here runs off the amendment record rather than a date parameter. A Justice Manual section comes back at its current revision only, with no as_of parameter to ask for an older one. What is available is amendment history, a yearFrom/yearTo currency filter, change events captured on each refresh, and per section diffs on watched boards. If you need a historical snapshot, store the text and actId you relied on at the time.

Where does this data come from?

justice.gov, the Department's own published copy, with the source URL returned on every result. No commercial aggregator is used as a source or as a fallback, which is the same rule applied across the rest of the corpus.

Priyansh Khodiyar

Co-Founder & CTO

Priyansh leads engineering and AI at Vaquill, from the matter workbench to drafting, document comparison, document matrix, and citation-verified research.