Opinion ID: 3185948
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Adjudicative Facts v. Legislative Facts

Text: The rule applies only to “adjudicative” facts, not “legislative” facts. Fed. R. Evid. 201(a). We have described adjudicative facts as “simply the facts of the particular case” and legislative facts as those having “relevance to legal reasoning and the lawmaking process; they are established truths, facts or pronouncements that do not change from Routine-taking of judicial notice on appeal would interfere with the trial courts’ role as fact-finders. Mueller & Kirkpatrick, supra, § 2:8. It would also effectively relieve a party from its duty to present facts in a timely fashion at trial. Id.; see also Garner v. Louisiana, 368 U.S. 157, 173 (1961) (refusing to take judicial notice for first time on appeal of racial relations existing in South as proof that defendants’ sit-in would “foreseeably disturb or alarm the public,” an element of the charge; “[t]o extend the doctrine of judicial notice to the length pressed by the respondent would require us to allow the prosecution to do through argument to this Court what it is required by due process to do at the trial, and would be to turn the doctrine into a pretext for dispensing with the trial”). These are valid concerns, but only as to judicial notice of adjudicative facts, not legislative ones. As Mueller and Kirkpatrick explain: [J]udicial notice of adjudicative facts that help prove charges or defeat defenses on the merits is improper on appeal . . . even though failure of proof on the part of the prosecution generally bars retrial of the defendant. It is less clear [whether this proposition] should apply to post-trial judicial notice of facts relating to matters of subject matter jurisdiction or venue, as opposed to matters relating to culpability. . . . It is one thing to say that defendants in criminal cases are entitled to jury determinations, and to the protection provided by the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, on elements relating to culpability. It is another thing to argue that defendants are entitled to such protections on points relating to the division of legislative responsibility between Congress and the states . . . . Perhaps with these points in the back of their minds, courts have in fact taken post-trial judicial notice of points relating to jurisdiction and venue, and there seems to be a growing trend toward making judges rather than juries responsible for deciding these points. Sound modern authority has concluded more generally that judicial notice in such settings lies beyond the reach of Rule 201. Mueller & Kirkpatrick, supra, § 2:10. 4 case to case but apply universally.” United States v. Wolny, 133 F.3d 758, 764 (10th Cir. 1998) (citations and quotation marks omitted). The Eighth Circuit has expounded on their differences: When a court finds facts concerning the immediate parties who did what, where, when, how, and with what motive or intent the court is performing an adjudicative function, and the facts are conveniently called adjudicative facts. Stated in other terms, the adjudicative facts are those to which the law is applied in the process of adjudication. They are the facts that normally go to the jury in a jury case. They relate to the parties, their activities, their properties, their businesses. Legislative facts, on the other hand, do not relate specifically to the activities or characteristics of the litigants. A court generally relies upon legislative facts when it purports to develop a particular law or policy and thus considers material wholly unrelated to the activities of the parties. Legislative facts are ordinarily general and do not concern the immediate parties. In the great mass of cases decided by courts, the legislative element is either absent or unimportant or interstitial, because in most cases the applicable law and policy have been previously established. But whenever a tribunal engages in the creation of law or of policy, it may need to resort to legislative facts, whether or not those facts have been developed on the record. United States v. Gould, 536 F.2d 216, 219-20 (8th Cir. 1976) (citations and quotation marks omitted); see also Mueller & Kirkpatrick, supra, § 2:2 (“[A]djudicative facts are the ‘who, what, where, and when’ of a lawsuit . . . .”).