The SEJUS is responsible for coordinating and collaborating with the justice administration of the Autonomous Communities; organizing, planning, supporting and cooperating with the Administration of Justice and with the Prosecution Ministry; establishing international legal cooperation and relations with international organizations and the European Union; promoting human rights; directing and managing those responsibilities regarding marital status and nationality, notaries, public faith, and civil register; as well as those related to the location, recovery, management and sale of objects, goods, instruments and profits from criminal activities.

[1] Likewise, it is the responsibility of the Secretary of State to promote and elaborate the regulatory projects on matters within its competence and those entrusted by the head of the department, without prejudice to the attributions corresponding to the Ministry's Under-Secretary and the Technical Secretary-General.

[2] From the Secretary of State depended as its highest department the General Secretariat for Justice and this, in turn, had as its superior body a Directorate-General for the judicial infrastructure.

[4] The structure of the department was not touched again until 2001 when the Directorate-General for the Modernization of the Administration of Justice was created in its midst.

Despite the name change of the Secretariat of State's bodies, the responsibilities were the same, with the exception of those relating to religious freedom, which were transferred from the Directorate-General for International Legal Cooperation, Relations with Religions, and Human Rights to the Undersecretariat of the Presidency, and the legal security and notaries responsibilities, which were transferred from the Undersecretariat of Justice to the Secretariat of State.