This text appears in the format of a letter response, on DOJ letterhead, to a request for information.
Revision of Original Letter
Dated 14 February 1992
You have asked for an 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.1/
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), 2/ made no provision for the seal for the office.3/ The 1849 Act for Authenticating Certain Records, which provides
[t]hat 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.5/
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.6/ 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...."[7/] 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.[8/]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:
[t]hat 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....[9/]According to Easby-Smith,
[t]he 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.[10/]As adopted in 1872,