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Department of Justice Seal - History - Extract for the DoJ Website
The English rendering of the somewhat enigmatic Latin
motto appearing on the seal of the Department of Justice: "Qui Pro
Domina Justitia Sequitur;" as well as an explanation of how the
Department came to adopt the motto and to what external source, if any,
the motto refers. It may come as no surprise to you that you are not the
first to have asked these questions, and that various efforts - none
entirely successful - have been undertaken in the past to arrive at
definitive answers.
The primary difficulty in ascertaining the precise
meaning of the motto comes from the fact that it is not known exactly
when the original version of the Department's seal itself was adopted,
nor is it known when the motto first appeared on the seal. The Act
initially creating the Office of the Attorney General (antecessor of the
Department of Justice), made no provision for the seal for the office.
The 1849 Act for Authenticating Certain Records, which provides
"that all books, papers, documents, and records in the...Attorney
General's Office, may be copied and certified under seal...and the said
Attorney General shall cause a seal to be made and provided for his
office, with such device as the President of the United States shall
approve.." corrected this omission by providing statutory authority for
a seal for the Attorney General's Office.4/ Pursuant to this Act, a
seal, supposed to incorporate the Great Seal of the United States, was
adopted.
Despite repeated and exhaustive research, no record has
been found that indicates even the approximate date of creation of this
seal, its approval by the President, or its adoption by the Attorney
General. A tradition, long prevailing in the Department, that the seal
had been devised and the motto chosen by Attorney General Black seems
now to be refuted, for Mr. Black did not become Attorney-General until
March 6, 1857, and Attorney-General Cushing in a report to the President
dated March 8, 1854, said that the Attorney-General's office "has an
official seal...." It is possible that the tradition is correct to the
extent that Mr. Black added the motto to the seal which had been adopted
by one of his predecessors. ...It is probable that very soon after
passage of the law Attorney-General Johnson devised the seal and
President Taylor approved it.
Soon after the Department itself was established, the
President signed into law the 1872 Act Transferring Certain Powers and
Duties to the Department of Justice, and Providing a Seal Therefor,
which provides: "that the seal heretofore provided for the office of the
Attorney-General shall be the seal of the Department of Justice, with
such change in the device as the President of the United States shall
approve, and all books, papers, documents, and records in the Department
of Justice may be copied and certified under seal....
According to Easby-Smith, "the seal as adopted by the
Attorney-General consisted of the United States shield, with stars
(improperly) on the chief, from it an eagle rising, with outstretched
wings, bearing in the right talon an olive branch, in the left arrows,
beneath which, in a semi-circle was the motto: Qui Pro Domina Justitia
Sequitur, and in an outer circle: Attorney General's Office; being, in
fact, identical with the present [i.e., 1904] seal of the Department
(adopted in 1872) except that in the latter the words Department of
Justice appear in the outer circle in place of Attorney General's
Office.
As adopted in 1872, the arms in the Department seal
contained several errors and violations of heraldic laws. First, the
shield (or escutcheon) in the Department's seal, said to be that of the
United States, was actually quite different: the shield in the Great
Seal of the United States has thirteen "stripes" and the chief has no
stars; in sharp contrast, the shield in the Department seal of 1872 had
only eleven "stripes" and, moreover, did have stars on the chief.
Second, the American eagle, for from being a supporter of the shield as
it is supposed to be, actually (and improperly) surmounts and obscures
it and is itself displayed inappropriately.
To correct the more serious errors in the Department's
original 1872 seal (i.e., those having to do with the devices on the
shield itself, but not those relating to the position of the eagle) the
President altered the Department's seal on April 27, 1934, on the
recommendation of the Attorney General, by ordering the following blazon
for the seal:
On a shield paleways of thirteen pieces argent and gules,
a chief azure, an eagle rising and standing on the middle of the shield
holding in his dexter talon an olive branch consisting of thirteen
leaves and berries and in his sinister talon thirteen arrows, all
proper. In an arc below the device the motto, "Qui Pro Domina Justitia
Sequitur." On an annulet surrounding this device the words "Department
of Justice" and three mullets, all contained within a corded edge.
When the device is rendered in colors the background of
the seal to be buff, the shield, eagle, olive branch, and arrows as
described above, with the motto and annulet in blue and the name of the
Department, mullets, edges of annulet and corded edge in gold... .
The curious obscurity surrounding the origins of the
Department's seal makes it difficult definitively to interpret the motto
appearing on it. As I suggested above, no evidence has been unearthed
that indicates unambiguously how, why, or when, the Department's motto
was chosen and placed on the seal, or what its exact meaning may be.
According to a longstanding (and officially-sanctioned)
Department tradition, however, the motto was suggested to
Attorney-General Black by a passage in Lord Coke's Institutes, Part 3,
folio 79, which reads thus:
And I well remember, when the Lord Treasurer Burleigh
told Queen Elizabeth, Madam, here is your Attorney-General (I being sent
for ) qui pro domina regina sequitur, she said she would have the
records altered; for it should be attornatus generalis [i.e., (your)
attorney general;"] qui pro dominal veritate sequitur.
The first of these phrases is believed to have been
quoted by Burleigh from a Latin form then in use (all judicial
proceedings were at that time required to be recorded in Latin) in
making up the record of actions brought by the Attorney-General on
behalf of the Crown. It is translated, "who (the Attorney-General) sues
for (or on behalf of) our lady the Queen." "Sequor" is employed in the
same sense (i.e., to sue or bring suit) in the Statute of Westminster 2,
Chap. 18, as follows: "in elections illius qui sequitur pro hujusmodi
debito" (see Coke's Institutes, Part 2, folio 394). In fact our word
"sue" comes from "sequor" (See Century Dictionary).
Dean Pound elaborated upon this story and offered his
explanation of the motto thus:
The matter is very simple indeed. The "pro" goes with the
noun and the verb. The motto is taken from the commencement of a
pleading in a proceeding by the Attorney-General at common law. ...[U]ntil
the reign of George the Second, all pleadings were in Latin. The
Attorney-General began, "Now comes so and so, Attorney-General, who
prosecutes on behalf of our Lord, the King." In the reign of Elizabeth,
of course, this would have been "who prosecutes on behalf of our Lady,
the Queen." Domina Justitia - our Lady Justice[21/] - was substituted
for our Lady the Queen, or our Lord the King. In other words, the seal
asserts that the Attorney-General prosecutes on behalf of justice. This
would seem a very appropriate motto for the Federal Department of
Justice.
I remember reading Mr. Easby-Smith's account of this and
it seemed to me very baffling on this point. The passage in Coke's Third
Institute [sic] means that when the Lord Treasurer introduced Coke as
Attorney-General to Queen Elizabeth he said in Latin, "Here is your
Attorney-General qui pro domina regina sequitur", [sic] that is, who
prosecutes for our Lady the Queen[.] Elizabeth, who was an excellent
scholar, answered, "It should be, Attorney-General who prosecutes for
our Lady the Truth."
Other, basically similar, interpretations of the motto -
some grammatically suspect, others more or less literal than the
foregoing, but none inappropriate to the Department's mission - have
been advanced. Notwithstanding such alternative translations, however,
following Dean Pound and the Department's immemorial tradition, the most
authoritative Department opinion suggests that the motto refers to the
Attorney General (and thus to the Department of Justice), "who
prosecutes on behalf of justice (or the Lady Justice)."
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