Definition
Latin: "so it is" or "so it stands." A formal attestation phrase used in civil law notarial practice. When an official copy (exemplification) is made from a deceased notary's register, the officer authorized to produce that copy substitutes the phrase ita est in place of the original notary's signature. The phrase functions as a certification that the copy faithfully represents what appears in the register — a successor's sworn declaration that the document is accurate as it stands.
Common Confusion
Ita est should not be confused with general notarial attestation clauses that appear during a notary's lifetime. A living notary authenticates copies with a personal signature and seal. Ita est is the specific mechanism that steps in when death or incapacity has made that personal authentication impossible. The phrase is not a general-purpose attestation formula; it is triggered by a specific procedural circumstance.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering ita est in historical documents face a layered authentication problem. Its presence signals two things simultaneously: first, that the underlying document is a copy, not an original; and second, that the original notary was deceased (or otherwise unavailable) at the time the copy was made. This can affect the evidentiary weight courts historically assigned to such documents and may explain why a given instrument lacks a conventional notarial signature.
In civil law jurisdictions — Louisiana being the most prominent American example — notarial records were maintained in registers and copied on demand. A document bearing ita est is one step removed from the register itself, and that register is one step removed from the underlying transaction. Researchers working with Louisiana colonial or antebellum records, Spanish and French colonial archives, or ecclesiastical records from civil law traditions should be alert to this chain of authentication.
The phrase also appears in records imported into common law proceedings as evidence of foreign or civil law instruments. Common law courts evaluating such documents would need to understand the attestation convention to assess admissibility. Historical treatises on evidence sometimes discuss ita est in this evidentiary context, though the term's narrow usage means it often goes unindexed.
Because the phrase appears in Latin and its meaning is not self-evident from the words alone, transcriptions of historical instruments sometimes misread or omit it. When searching digitized archives, researchers should search variant spellings and contextual neighbors (successor notary names, dates of death, phrases like "from the register of").
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both the first and second editions) present nearly identical definitions, treating ita est as a feature of "modern civil law" — meaning the civil law tradition as it existed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, not ancient Roman practice. Both editions correctly identify the succession-of-office context as the operative trigger. The second edition reproduces the first with only minor typographical variation, suggesting the editors found the original formulation sufficient and the term stable.
Rapalje and Lawrence add the most procedurally precise account: they specify that ita est substitutes for the signature that a living notary would have added, and frame the practice around the death of the original notary rather than the broader category of unavailability. This framing is useful because it clarifies that ita est is not merely an alternative form of attestation but a replacement mechanism necessitated by death. Rapalje and Lawrence also use the phrase "among the civilians," which situates the term squarely within civil law jurisprudence rather than common law notarial practice.
None of the three sources address what happens when the successor officer dies before completing the exemplification, nor do they discuss how common law courts evaluated the sufficiency of ita est attestation when civil law instruments were offered as evidence in mixed-jurisdiction proceedings. Researchers encountering such questions will need to go beyond the historical dictionaries.
Jurisdictional Note
Ita est is a civil law notarial convention and has no direct equivalent in common law notarial practice. It is most relevant to research involving Louisiana, Puerto Rico, Quebec, and jurisdictions whose records derive from Spanish or French colonial administration. Researchers working with common law jurisdictions will rarely encounter the term except in contexts where civil law instruments were offered as evidence before common law courts.