A self-authenticating document, under the law

Law

Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

 of evidence

Evidence (law)

The law of evidence encompasses the rules and legal principles that govern the proof of facts in a legal proceeding. These rules determine what evidence can be considered by the trier of fact in reaching its decision and, sometimes, the weight that may be given to that evidence...

 in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, is any document

Document

The term document has multiple meanings in ordinary language and in scholarship. WordNet 3.1. lists four meanings :* document, written document, papers...

 that can be admitted into evidence at a trial without proof being submitted to support the claim that the document is what it appears to be. Several categories of documents are deemed to be self-authenticating:

1. Certified copy of public or business records;
2. Official publications of government agencies;
3. Newspaper articles;
4. Trade inscriptions, such as labels on products;
5. Acknowledged documents (wherein the signer also gets a paper notarized
   Notary public
   A notary public in the common law world is a public officer constituted by law to serve the public in non-contentious matters usually concerned with estates, deeds, powers-of-attorney, and foreign and international business...
   
   ); and
6. Commercial paper
   Commercial paper
   In the global money market, commercial paper is an unsecured promissory note with a fixed maturity of 1 to 270 days. Commercial Paper is a money-market security issued by large banks and corporations to get money to meet short term debt obligations , and is only backed by an issuing bank or...
   
    under the Uniform Commercial Code
   Uniform Commercial Code
   The Uniform Commercial Code , first published in 1952, is one of a number of uniform acts that have been promulgated in conjunction with efforts to harmonize the law of sales and other commercial transactions in all 50 states within the United States of America.The goal of harmonizing state law is...
   
   .

Although most U.S. state

U.S. state

A U.S. state is any one of the 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government. Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile. Four states use the official title of...

s have evidentiary rules similar to the Federal Rules of Evidence

Federal Rules of Evidence

The is a code of evidence law governing the admission of facts by which parties in the United States federal court system may prove their cases, both civil and criminal. The Rules were enacted in 1975, with subsequent amendments....

, the California Evidence Code diverges significantly from the FRE in that it does not treat trade inscriptions as self-authenticating. This means that if a defendant does not stipulate to the authenticity and accuracy of a trade inscription, the plaintiff must use expert testimony to establish the authenticity of the inscription and to get around the obvious hearsay

Hearsay

Hearsay is information gathered by one person from another person concerning some event, condition, or thing of which the first person had no direct experience. When submitted as evidence, such statements are called hearsay evidence. As a legal term, "hearsay" can also have the narrower meaning of...

issue (to establish, based on common practice within the trade, that the product is what the inscription says it is).