Rule 44-I.Proving Statutes, Ordinances, and Regulations

Proving what a law says can otherwise require calling a witness to authenticate a government publication. Rule 44-I removes that burden for the ordinary case: a printed book or pamphlet that purports on its face to be the statutes, ordinances, or regulations of the United States, of any state or territory, or of a foreign jurisdiction is presumptively treated by the court as constituting those laws — as long as it is either published by the authority of the relevant government or commonly recognized as authoritative in that government's own courts.

That second option matters for jurisdictions where an official government printing may not exist or may not be readily available; a compilation that the jurisdiction's own courts routinely treat as authoritative can satisfy the rule even without a formal government imprint. The presumption spares the parties from having to independently prove that the book they are relying on accurately reflects the applicable law.

The rule also fixes how this determination is treated procedurally: the court's decision about what the law says is a ruling on a question of law, not a factual finding. That classification matters because rulings on law and findings of fact are reviewed differently, and it keeps questions about the content of a foreign or sister-jurisdiction's law where they belong — as legal determinations for the court rather than factual questions for a jury.