Authentication (law)

Authentication, in the

law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...

evidence Evidence for a proposition is what supports this proposition. It is usually understood as an indication that the supported proposition is true. What role evidence plays and how it is conceived varies from field to field. In epistemology, evidenc ...

, is the process by which

documentary evidence Documentary evidence is any evidence that is, or can be, introduced at a trial in the form of documents, as distinguished from oral testimony. Documentary evidence is most widely understood to refer to writings on paper (such as an invoice, a con ...

and other

physical evidence In evidence law, physical evidence (also called real evidence or material evidence) is any material object that plays some role in the matter that gave rise to the litigation, introduced as evidence in a judicial proceeding (such as a trial) to ...

is proven to be genuine, and not a forgery. Generally, authentication can be shown in one of two ways. First, a witness can testify as to the

chain of custody Chain of custody (CoC), in legal contexts, is the chronological documentation or paper trail that records the sequence of custody, control, transfer, analysis, and disposition of materials, including physical or electronic evidence. Of particular ...

through which the evidence passed from the time of the discovery up until the trial. Second, the evidence can be authenticated by the opinion of an

expert witness An expert witness, particularly in common law countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States, is a person whose opinion by virtue of education, training, certification, skills or experience, is accepted by the judge as ...

examining the evidence to determine if it has all of the properties that it would be expected to have if it were authentic. For handwritten documents, any person who has become familiar with the purported author's handwriting prior to the cause of action from which the trial arose can testify that a document is in that handwriting. There are several kinds of documents which have generally been deemed to be

self-authenticating documents A self-authenticating document, under the law of evidence in the United States, is any document 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 c ...

. These include commercial labels, newspapers and other periodicals, and official publications of an arm of the government. A special category of evidence called an

ancient document {{Evidence law An ancient document, in the law of evidence, refers to both a means of authentication for a piece of documentary evidence, and an exception to the hearsay rule. Authentication With respect to authentication, an "ancient document ...

will be deemed authentic if it can be shown to be more than twenty years old, and found in a place and condition that a document of that age would likely be found. Evidence law {{Law-term-stub