Definition
The great seal is the principal official seal of a sovereign authority — a nation, state, or crown — used to authenticate the highest category of public documents, commissions, treaties, and acts of state. Affixing the great seal signals that a document carries the full formal authority of the sovereign or government it represents.
In the United States federal system, the Great Seal of the United States is the official emblem and authenticating device of the federal government. The Secretary of State is its custodian and affixes it to presidential proclamations, ratified treaties, letters of credence to foreign governments, and commissions of high federal officers. At the state level, each state maintains its own great seal, typically held by the Secretary of State, used to authenticate gubernatorial commissions, extradition papers, and official state documents.
In English law, the great seal historically served as the mechanism through which a significant portion of royal prerogative was exercised. Custody of the great seal defined the office of the Lord Chancellor or Lord Keeper. Following the Act of Union of England and Scotland (1707), a single great seal was established for the United Kingdom, used for summoning Parliament, sealing treaties with foreign states, and authenticating all major public acts and instruments of state.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "The main seal of a nation or state that symbolizes its authority, and with which official documents are stamped."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The term carried similar meaning in general use — the principal seal belonging to a sovereign or state government, understood as a mark of supreme official authentication.
The gap between common and legal usage is narrow but consequential in a research context. Common usage treats the great seal primarily as a symbol. Legal usage treats it as an operative instrument: the act of affixing the great seal is not ceremonial decoration but a formal legal act with defined custodial authority and procedural requirements. Whether a document has been sealed — and by whom — can determine its admissibility, its legal effect, and the scope of authority it conveys.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Great Seal of the United States: Held by the Secretary of State. Used for treaties, presidential commissions, and major federal instruments.
State Great Seals: Each U.S. state maintains its own great seal. Typically held by the Secretary of State. Required for authenticating extradition requests, gubernatorial commissions, and documents presented to foreign or federal authorities.
Royal Great Seal (English/UK): Historically held by the Lord Chancellor or Lord Keeper. Used for writs summoning Parliament, royal charters, patents of nobility, and treaties. The Act of Union (5 Anne c. 8, art. 24) unified the English and Scottish seals into a single UK great seal.
Why It Matters in Research
Authentication chains. When researching historical documents in the Law Mind corpus — commissions, patents, charters, extradition papers — the presence or absence of the great seal is often legally dispositive, not merely formal. Early American cases debated whether an unsealed commission conveyed the underlying appointment at all (the question at the core of Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803), though researchers should verify the precise procedural posture there).
Custodial shifts matter. In English legal history, who held the great seal — Lord Chancellor, Lord Keeper, or Lords Commissioners — affected the legal validity of acts taken during interregnums or political transitions. Historical sources covering the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries require attention to whether a seal was in authorized custody at the time of an act's execution.
Federal-state authentication. Researchers using the Law Mind corpus on extradition, full faith and credit, and interstate records will encounter great seal requirements repeatedly. A document authenticated under a state's great seal carries presumptive validity in other jurisdictions; an unauthenticated copy does not. This distinction appears throughout historical court records.
Do not conflate with record sealing. The word "seal" appears in the Law Mind corpus in an entirely different legal context — sealing of court records, expungement, and juvenile record confidentiality. These are procedurally and conceptually unrelated to the great seal as an authenticating instrument of sovereign authority. Corpus searches on "seal" will surface both contexts indiscriminately.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary and Bouvier's Law Dictionary are in close agreement, with Bouvier's entry extending slightly further by noting the American application: the seal of the United States or of a state, used in executing commissions and public documents. Both sources anchor the definition in English constitutional practice before turning to American usage, reflecting the intellectual debt American legal writers owed to English public law.
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry, though partially corrupted in the source material, preserves the Act of Union reference (5 Anne c. 8, art. 24), which is the foundational statutory text for the unified UK great seal. Researchers should consult the Act of Union directly for its full provisions rather than relying on secondary dictionary paraphrase.
What historical dictionaries underemphasize: the administrative and evidentiary dimensions of the great seal in American practice. They treat it primarily as a constitutional-ceremonial object rather than as a recurring evidentiary and procedural issue in litigation, extradition, and interstate document authentication — contexts where it appears constantly in American case law.
Jurisdictional Note
In the United States, both federal and state great seals carry legal authentication functions, but the procedural requirements for when a seal must be affixed vary by jurisdiction and document type. Federal statutes and regulations specify which documents require the Great Seal of the United States. State law governs state seal requirements. Researchers working across jurisdictions on extradition or interstate authentication questions should consult the specific statutes of the relevant states rather than assuming uniform requirements.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia: Expungement, Sealing, and Record Clearing — for the distinct (and unrelated) use of "sealing" in criminal record contexts.
The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia: Juvenile Records — Confidentiality and Sealing — same caution applies; corpus searches will surface this material alongside great seal references.
The Law Mind Constitutional Law Encyclopedia: Habeas Corpus — The Great Writ and Suspension Clause — relevant for researchers working on prerogative writs issuing under the great seal in English constitutional history.