Code of Civil Procedure Provides Helpful Guidance on Public Writings

California’s Code of Civil Procedure in Part 4, Title 2, Chapter 3, Article 2 concerns public writings. These statutory provisions should be placed in all other Codes because they provide helpful guidance concerning these types of writings. Article 2 is contained in CCP Section 1895 to 1917. Many of these provisions of the CCP were enacted in 1872 and have remained “on the books” since that time.

Section 1895 specifies that laws, whether organic or ordinary, are either written or unwritten.

Section 1896 states that a written law is that which is promulgated in writing, and of which a record is in existence.

Section 1897 explains that the organic law is the Constitution of Government, and is altogether written. Other written laws are denominated statutes. The written law of this State is therefore contained in its Constitution and statutes, and in the Constitution and statutes of the United States.

Section 1898 provides that statutes are public or private. A private statute is one which concerns only certain designated individuals, and affects only their private rights. All other statutes are public, in which are included statutes creating or affecting corporations.

Section 1899 explains that unwritten law is the law not promulgated and recorded, as mentioned in Section 1896, but which is, nevertheless, observed and administered in the Courts of the country. It has no certain repository, but is collected from the reports of the decisions of the Courts, and the treatises of learned men.

Section 1904 states that a judicial record is the record or official entry of the proceedings in a Court of justice, or of the official act of a judicial officer, in an action or special proceeding.

Section 1908.5 provides that, when a judgment or order of a court is conclusive, the judgment or order must be alleged in the pleadings if there be an opportunity to do so; if there is not an opportunity, them the judgment or order may be used as evidence.

Section 1909 says that other judicial orders of a Court or Judge of this State, or of the United States, create a disputable presumption, according to the matter directly determined, between the same parties and their representatives and successors in interest by title subsequent to the commencement of the action or special proceeding, litigating for the same thing under the same title and in the same capacity.

Section 1910 states that the parties are deemed to be the same when those between whom the evidence is offered were on opposite sides in the former case, and a judgment or other determination could in that case have been made between them alone, though other parties were joined with both or either.

Section 1913 provides that the effect of a judicial record of a sister state is the same in this state as in the state where it was made, except that it can only be enforced in this state by an action or special proceeding.

Section 1914 states that the effect of the judicial record of a Court of admiralty of a foreign country is the same as if it were the record of a Court of admiralty of the United States.

Section 1916 provides that any judicial record may be impeached by evidence of a want of jurisdiction in the Court or judicial officer, of collusion between the parties, or of fraud in the party offering the record, in respect to the proceedings.

Section 1917 explains that the jurisdiction sufficient to sustain a record is jurisdiction over the cause, over the parties, and over the thing, when a specific thing is the subject of the judgment.