Judicial Notice of the Law of Sister States Under the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Federal Constitution

Authors

Donald G. Simpson

Abstract

A year ago in the case of State v. Johnson the court approved the admission in evidence of certified photostatic copies of fingerprint records from penitentiaries of Oregon and California to prove the identity of the defendant as a prior inmate of those institutions. The court relied on a federal statute which, under authority of Article IV, § 1, of the Federal Constitution, sets forth the procedure for certification of records that was followed in that case. It therefore became necessary for the court to investigate the laws or usages of the Oregon and California courts to determine whether or not those courts admitted in evidence photostatic copies of fingerprint records for identification purposes; this the court did by citing a case in point from each jurisdiction. Thus the court took judicial notice of the law of a sister state in seeming contradiction to the well settled rule that a court will not judicially notice the law of a foreign jurisdiction.

First Page

222

Recommended Citation

Donald G. Simpson, Comment, Judicial Notice of the Law of Sister States Under the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Federal Constitution, 14 Wash. L. Rev. & St. B.J. 222 (1939).
Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/wlr/vol14/iss3/6