diff --git a/helper/policyutil/policyutil.go b/helper/policyutil/policyutil.go
index 09fee92fd5..14f25c391f 100644
--- a/helper/policyutil/policyutil.go
+++ b/helper/policyutil/policyutil.go
@@ -3,13 +3,29 @@ package policyutil
 import (
 	"sort"
 	"strings"
+
+	"github.com/hashicorp/vault/helper/strutil"
 )
 
 func ParsePolicies(policiesRaw string) []string {
+	if policiesRaw == "" {
+		return []string{"default"}
+	}
+
 	policies := strings.Split(policiesRaw, ",")
+
+	return SanitizePolicies(policies)
+}
+
+func SanitizePolicies(policies []string) []string {
 	defaultFound := false
 	for i, p := range policies {
 		policies[i] = strings.ToLower(strings.TrimSpace(p))
+		// Eliminate unnamed policies.
+		if policies[i] == "" {
+			continue
+		}
+
 		// If 'root' policy is present, ignore all other policies.
 		if policies[i] == "root" {
 			policies = []string{"root"}
@@ -26,10 +42,7 @@ func ParsePolicies(policiesRaw string) []string {
 		policies = append(policies, "default")
 	}
 
-	// Sort to make the computations on policies consistent.
-	sort.Strings(policies)
-
-	return policies
+	return strutil.RemoveDuplicates(policies)
 }
 
 // ComparePolicies checks whether the given policy sets are equivalent, as in,
diff --git a/helper/strutil/strutil.go b/helper/strutil/strutil.go
index de558e8cfd..dd76bea362 100644
--- a/helper/strutil/strutil.go
+++ b/helper/strutil/strutil.go
@@ -1,5 +1,10 @@
 package strutil
 
+import (
+	"sort"
+	"strings"
+)
+
 // StrListContains looks for a string in a list of strings.
 func StrListContains(haystack []string, needle string) bool {
 	for _, item := range haystack {
@@ -20,3 +25,35 @@ func StrListSubset(super, sub []string) bool {
 	}
 	return true
 }
+
+// Parses a comma separated list of strings into a slice of strings.
+// The return slice will be sorted and will not contain duplicate or
+// empty items. The values will be converted to lower case.
+func ParseStrings(input string) []string {
+	var parsed []string
+	if input == "" {
+		// Don't return nil
+		return parsed
+	}
+	return RemoveDuplicates(strings.Split(input, ","))
+}
+
+// Removes duplicate and empty elements from a slice of strings.
+// This also converts the items in the slice to lower case and
+// returns a sorted slice.
+func RemoveDuplicates(items []string) []string {
+	itemsMap := map[string]bool{}
+	for _, item := range items {
+		item = strings.ToLower(strings.TrimSpace(item))
+		if item == "" {
+			continue
+		}
+		itemsMap[item] = true
+	}
+	items = []string{}
+	for item, _ := range itemsMap {
+		items = append(items, item)
+	}
+	sort.Strings(items)
+	return items
+}