First Secretary of State is a title within the British government, principally regarded as purely honorific, currently held by the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott. The title, which implies senority over all other Secretaries of State, has no specific powers or authority attached. It originated as an alternative to the use of the title Deputy Prime Minister, which was opposed by some for constitutional reasons. The principal of one of these objections was that the title implied some degree of expectation that there would be a right of succession to the Prime Minister's position in the event of the death or resignation of the incumbent. No such expectation could exist in the UK, since the Prime Minister is appointed by the Sovereign, whose discretion could not constitutionally be fettered. The United Kingdom is a unitary state and a democratic constitutional monarchy. ... The office of Deputy Prime Minister is one that has only existed occasionally in the history of the United Kingdom. ... John Prescott The Right Honourable John Leslie Prescott (born May 31, 1938) is a British Labour Party politician who is presently Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and First Secretary of State. ... A Deputy Prime Minister is the deputy of a Prime Minister, and a member of a nations cabinet. ... A prime minister may be either: the chief or leading member of the cabinet of the top-level government in a country having a parliamentary system of government; or the official, in countries with a semi-presidential system of government, appointed to manage the civil service and execute the directives... In the United Kingdom, the Prime Minister is the head of government, exercising many of the executive functions nominally vested in the Sovereign, who is head of state. ... The adjective sovereign is used to refer to a state of sovereignty. ...
The firstsecretary of state, Henry Hitchcock (1818-19) served for the Alabama Territory.
Minimum requirements for the job are that the secretary of state be at least 25 years old, a registered voter, a resident of the state for five years and a United States citizen for seven years.
State law gives the secretary of state more than 1,000 different duties and virtually all of them involve processing and filing documents that are public records.
The Dept. of State is the oldest of the federal departments, and thus the secretary of state, at the head of the department, is the first ranking cabinet officer.
The Department of State, the senior executive department of the U.S. government, was established by an act of July 27, 1789, as the Department of Foreign Affairs and was renamed Department of State by an act of September 15, 1789.
The secretary of state, the principal foreign policy adviser to the president, is responsible for the overall direction, coordination, and supervision of U.S. foreign relations and for the interdepartmental activities of the U.S. government overseas.
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