Changes at the Department of Justice Website-Truth! & Fiction!

Changes at the Department of Justice Website-Truth! & Fiction!

Summary of eRumor:
 

This is a forwarded email that says that the Department of Justice has changed the format of its web site from the traditional red, white and blue to black and also contains a quotation by C. Wilfred Jenks, an international lawyer and director-general of the International Labour Organization.  The writer of the email alleged that this “makes the DOJ look corrupt in their new website with Marxist accessories to match.”

The Truth:
Shortly after the Obama Administration came into power in 2009 there was a change in the appearance of the Department of Justice web site.
We checked several government web sites and at the time of our investigation, we have found no evidence that there is any official boiler plate standard for publishing U.S. Government web sites and there also appears to be no “official rule” that says that an official government web site needs to be done in a traditional red, white and blue motif.   We have found that even the military sites on the World Wide Web all have their own uniqueness in appearance.

Questionable Quotation

The quotation on the US Department of Justice website was inspired from an inscription that is found on the eastern side of the Justice Building that was erected in 1935.  Inscribed on the side of the building is, “‘The common law derives from the will of mankind, issuing from the life of the people, framed by mutual confidence, and sanctioned by the light of reason.”

The quotation did not come from British attorney C. Wilfred Jenks and a spokesperson from the Library of Congress attributed it to Hartley Burr Alexander a scholar, philosopher, poet, and architectural iconographer who was retained by C. Paul Hennewein,  the chief sculptor of the Department of Justice building.
updated 08/25/12