Union Department of Justice and Human Rights

The Union Department of Justice and Human Rights is a department new to Union as of the founding of ThirdComm, cobbling together a mix of responsibilities, jurisdictions, and obligations under a single, broad mission: identify areas of the galaxy where the Utopian Pillars are under threat of being violated, and intervene on a case-by-case basis. Among its personnel, the DoJ/HR is referred to as the New Division – a dual reference to the general youth of its personnel and its (relatively) short history as a department.
The New Division’s mission leads to an understandably broad portfolio that encompasses everything from first contact with isolated cultures to critical humanitarian response, direct action intervention, truth and justice hearings, and universe reconstruction. This work demands a type of person common in the Galactic Core but not often found in other departments: young people eager for rapid action – policy, legal, or literal. Within Union’s other departments, few match the fervor with which the staff of the DoJ/HR approach their work; conversely, few – if any – of Union’s other departments can match the DoJ/HR’s burnout rate.
Burnout is a fact of the job at the DoJ/HR. The New Division is the terminus for the galaxy’s sins: every human rights violation, every distress call, every cry for help finds its way, eventually, to the DoJ/HR. To counteract this burnout, frontline personnel and caseworkers are often surprised with “delivery days”, unexpected deliveries from their commanding officers that contain collected reports from successfully resolved cases and personal messages from people their efforts have directly or indirectly helped.
The DoJ/HR’s mission is put into practice through a rich symbiotic relationship with Union’s administrative and naval departments. Using access to the broad base of intelligence and human assets provided by the UAD and the UN – as well as its own caseworkers – the New Division identifies two types of missions: critical assistance and universe-building.
Critical assistance missions (CAMs) take place when impending or ongoing violation events necessitate rapid, direct action to intervene and prevent further human cost. These warrant the intervention of one of the DoJ/HR’s liberator teams (LTs), institutionalized successors to ThirdComm’s early Interstellar Solidarity Brigades. For most New Division personnel, CAMs are “where the action is at” – that is, they are violent confrontations with slavers3, despots, tyrants, and so on. LTs are commonly composed of Metropolitan volunteers working in tandem with local sympathetic factions. Their missions call for rapid movement, adogmatic warfare, and long-term deployment; not only do they intervene, but they remain following the conclusion of hostilities, helping to transition liberated communities into stable political entities appropriate for the local culture.
The DoJ/HR’s LTs are tight-knit, professional strikeand- support units. They employ a liberation-focused approach: once targets are identified, force is valued over diplomacy, and their prime objective is to emancipate and enfranchise enslaved peoples at the expense of their masters. Their tactical doctrines emphasize either infiltration and agitation or direct confrontation, depending on the situation.
Universe-building missions (UBMs) require a less immediate response. A common joke among LTs is that anything that doesn’t involve a mass grave qualifies as a UBM. They’re not wrong, though such an assessment isn’t always accurate. UBMs typically take place in response to Pillar violations that are “soft”, though no less criminal: exploitation, denial of basic services, totalitarian or fascistic drift, and so on. UBMs involve slow intervention on the part of DoJ/HR caseworkers, local experts, and so on.
Because the DoJ/HR’s portfolio straddles the purviews of both the UN and the UAD, many New Division operations involve resources from both of the other departments. In such cases, the New Division has the power to deputize naval and administrative personnel, vessels, and materiel.

Although slavery is now strictly prohibited under ThirdComm, it was once endorsed with special exception by SecComm, which viewed flash and facsimile clones as property rather than people. In addition to a number of other grievances that triggered ThirdComm’s revolution, the abolishment of SecComm’s endorsement of chattel and economic bondage was one of the revolutionaries’ primary demands.
The DoJ/HR oversees all active and ongoing emancipation missions. Before its founding, the DoJ/HR’s predecessors, the Interstellar Solidarity Brigades, developed a holistic liberation-to-integration program meant not only to liberate enslaved peoples, but to settle them, enfranchise them, address wealth redistribution, and support them throughout the recovery process. Now formally codified, legally supported, and bolstered by ongoing review by ThirdComm, the DoJ/HR’s liberator teams boast a near perfect success rate in emancipatory actions.