CONGRESSIONAL ENACTMENT OF UNIFORM JUDICIAL NOTICE ACT

Authors

Lawrence E. Hartwig, University of Oregon

Abstract

The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform Laws approved in 1936 the Uniform Judicial Notice of Foreign Law Act, which has since been adopted by fourteen states. This act was drafted to make uniform a legislative movement of the past twelve years proposing to change two rules of the common law. One is the rule that a state court will not notice the law of sister states in the United States; and the other is the rule that the determination of such law shall be made by the jury and not by the judge. Accordingly, the Uniform Act provides (1) that state courts shall take judicial notice of the common law and statutes of every state, territory, and other jurisdiction of the United States, and (2) that laws of sister states and foreign countries shall be determined by the judge. These two provisions are complementary to each other, since a corollary of the requirement of judicial notice is the requirement that sister state law shall be decided by the judge and not by the jury.

Recommended Citation

Lawrence E. Hartwig, CONGRESSIONAL ENACTMENT OF UNIFORM JUDICIAL NOTICE ACT, 40 Mich. L. Rev. 174 (1941).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol40/iss2/3