Judicial notice is a court’s acceptance of a well-known and indisputable fact without requiring the party relying on the fact to prove it. The doctrine of judicial notice is one of common sense, and is based on the theory that where a fact is well-known in the community—or its existence is easily determined from sources that cannot be reasonably questioned—it would not be a good use of judicial time and resources to require formal proof of the fact in court. A court may take judicial notice of both facts and laws.

In Kansas, judicial notice is governed by the Kansas Statutes and the Kansas Rules of Evidence, specifically K.S.A. 60-409. The statute allows courts to take judicial notice of 'matters of common knowledge in the community' and 'matters that are verifiable from sources of indisputably accuracy.' This means that Kansas courts can accept certain facts as true without requiring evidence if those facts are widely known and not subject to reasonable dispute. For example, a court might take judicial notice of the fact that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Additionally, courts in Kansas can take judicial notice of the laws, including statutes, regulations, and case law, not only of Kansas but also of other states, federal law, and even international law and the laws of foreign countries, as long as the relevant law can be readily determined. The decision to take judicial notice is at the discretion of the court and can be requested by a party to the case or initiated by the court itself.