§ 25-1293.Public seal affixed to copy of written law or public writing; effect; unwritten law; how proved.

Section 25-1293 covers two different ways to prove what the law is somewhere else. First, for written law: a copy of a statute or other public writing carries its own admissibility once it bears the public seal of the state or county. The seal does the authenticating work that would otherwise require a witness or certificate.

Second, for unwritten law, the common law of another state or government, not reduced to a single statute, the section allows proof by parol evidence, meaning testimony about what that law is, and also by the published books of reports containing the decisions of that jurisdiction’s courts. Treating unwritten law as a fact to be proved, rather than something the court must already know, reflects an older approach that Nebraska’s later judicial-notice statutes, including the Uniform Judicial Notice of Foreign Law Act beginning at section 25-12,101, build on and extend.