§ 8.01-388.Judicial notice of official publications (Supreme Court Rule 2:203 derived from this section).

Section 8.01-388 extends judicial notice from the substance of the law itself, covered in the section before it, to the official publications that record government activity. A Virginia court has to take notice of the contents of every official publication of the Commonwealth and its political subdivisions and agencies that the law requires to be published — no separate proof needed to establish what those publications say.

The reach is not limited to Virginia. The same duty extends to official publications of other states, of the United States, of other countries, and of the political subdivisions and agencies within each of those jurisdictions, as long as the publication was required to be published under the laws of the place that issued it. A court does not need a certified copy or a witness to establish what a properly issued official publication from another jurisdiction says; it notices the content directly.

Read together with the definitions in § 8.01-385, this section reaches further than paper publications alone — an official registry or listing posted on a government website counts as an official publication, and posting to that website counts as publishing it, so the judicial-notice duty keeps pace with how governments put information out today.