Judicial notice is frequently used for the simplest, most obvious common sense facts, such as which day of the week corresponded to a particular calendar date or the approximate time at sunset.
[1] However, it could even be used within one jurisdiction to notice a law of another jurisdiction—such as one which provides average baselines for motor vehicle stopping distances.
A trial court's decision to take judicial notice or not to do so is reviewed on appeal under the standard of abuse of discretion.
[6] In the 1858 murder trial of William Armstrong, his attorney, then-former Congressman Abraham Lincoln, used judicial notice to establish that a claim by a witness to have used moonlight to see events could not have taken place since there was no visible moon that evening.
[8] In the 1981 case of Mel Mermelstein v. Institute for Historical Review, the Superior Court of Los Angeles County took judicial notice of the fact that Jews were gassed to death at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in 1944.
[11] Besides the categories of judicially noticed facts found in other common law jurisdictions, the Supreme Court of Canada has required Canadian courts to take judicial notice (connaissance d'office) of such facts as the history of colonialism in Canada and its harmful effects on Indigenous peoples: Some judges have taken a similar approach to the history of racism against other ethnic groups in Canada, such as African Canadians, concerning whom Justice Nakatsuru of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice wrote: However, some other judges have declined to follow this approach.