US · guidance
Justice Manual § 1-19.260
Legal or Factual Context
The Department may also use agency guidance documents to provide relevant legal or factual context in briefs and other filings. For example, in the background section of a brief, the Department may cite a manual to explain how an agency processes payments.
[Footnote 1] The term “guidance document” does not include the following:
(1) Decisions, orders, or other documents issued in adjudicatory actions that do not purport to or have the effect of binding anyone beyond the parties to the adjudication.
(2) Documents informing the public of the agency’s enforcement priorities or factors the agency considers in exercising its prosecutorial discretion.
(3) Internal directives, memoranda, legal and strategy monographs, or training materials for agency personnel directing them on how to carry out their duties, positions taken by an agency in litigation, or legal advice provided by the Department.
(4) Documents shared with state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies in order to assist their cooperation with DOJ, such as “frequently asked questions” documents, “how to” guidance documents, resources guides, and “steps to follow” guidance documents.
History
[Updated September 2026]
Provenance
- Source
- justice.gov
- Retrieved
- 2026-09-20
- Edition
- jm-2026-09-20
- Content hash
df1ad17debffcacb82b99c503717148d1d3b3968e755602afb142b9d1a4a28a0
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Unofficial copy of government-published law, reproduced from official sources with full provenance. Not an official publication; verify against official sources before relying on it in a filing. Records in the 'guidance' corpus, and only that corpus, are sub-regulatory (interpretive guidelines, survey procedures) and are not binding law. Validity bounds follow each jurisdiction's declared temporalBasis.