Definition
In procedural law, sealing up refers to the practice by which a party ordered to produce a document may physically seal or cover a portion of that document before production, where that portion is either irrelevant to the matters at issue or is protected from disclosure by privilege. The sealing is not self-executing: the party must obtain leave of the court and must support the sealing by affidavit, swearing that the withheld portion is irrelevant or privileged. The practice reflects the principle that a discovery or production order should not compel disclosure beyond what the proceeding legitimately requires.
In modern usage, the term "sealing" has expanded considerably beyond this narrow documentary practice. Courts now speak of sealing court records, sealing case files, and sealing criminal records — all of which share the core idea of restricting access to materials from public or general judicial view, but which operate under distinct procedural frameworks from the historical sealing up of produced documents.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Present participle and gerund of "seal up" — the act of closing something completely, as in sealing an envelope or sealing a container shut.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To close or fasten securely; to stop up so as to prevent passage or access.
The gap between common and legal meaning is specific rather than dramatic. Ordinary usage conveys physical closure. The legal term of art adds conditions: judicial authorization, affidavit support, and the distinction between withholding a portion of a document on grounds of irrelevance or privilege, as opposed to withholding the document entirely. A researcher encountering "sealing up" in historical equity practice should not read it as a simple act of concealment but as a regulated procedural accommodation.
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Why It Matters in Research
The term presents a historical-to-modern translation problem. In older equity practice — particularly English Chancery, where Black's traces the practice — sealing up was a specific mechanism within document production, governed by strict procedural conditions. Modern researchers who encounter the phrase in historical equity records, chancery treatises, or nineteenth-century American procedure must not conflate it with contemporary record sealing, which is a different doctrine with a different constitutional and statutory framework.
In the modern corpus, "sealing" without the "up" almost exclusively refers to the restriction of court records or criminal history records from public access. This doctrine is addressed extensively in criminal procedure materials and juvenile law, and is governed in most jurisdictions by statute rather than case-by-case judicial discretion in the Chancery tradition.
Researchers using Law Mind sources should be alert to the following navigation points:
First, materials dealing with document production in equity proceedings will use "sealing up" in the Chancery sense. The Daniell reference in Black's points toward English equity treatise authority; American adoption of this practice was uneven.
Second, the jump from "sealing up a portion of a document" to "sealing a criminal record" is a conceptual leap across entirely different procedural bodies. Do not use pre-twentieth-century dictionary authority to interpret modern record-sealing statutes.
Third, in research on criminal records, juvenile proceedings, or post-conviction relief, the relevant encyclopedia entries in this corpus are the operative starting points, not the historical dictionary definition.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary provides the core technical definition: where a party subject to a production order holds a document containing irrelevant or privileged material, the party may, with court leave and supporting affidavit, seal that portion before producing the rest. Black's cites Daniell's Chancery Practice as authority, anchoring the term firmly in English equity procedure.
Black's entry is notably incomplete — the text as preserved breaks off mid-sentence ("The sealing up is generally..."), suggesting the original entry continued with procedural detail that has not survived in the excerpted form available here. Researchers relying solely on this entry should treat it as a starting point rather than a complete procedural account.
No American treatise or statutory authority is cited in the available source material. Whether American equity courts adopted the Chancery practice wholesale, modified it, or gradually displaced it through codified discovery rules is a question the available dictionary source does not resolve. Researchers tracing the American procedural history of this practice should consult equity pleading and practice treatises of the nineteenth century directly.
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Jurisdictional Note
The historical Chancery form of sealing up was an English equity practice and its American adoption varied by state. Modern record sealing is almost entirely statutory in the United States, with significant variation in eligibility, procedure, and effect across jurisdictions. No uniform federal rule governs sealing of criminal records at the state level.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Expungement, Sealing, and Record Clearing — The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia
Juvenile Records — Confidentiality and Sealing — The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia
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