Definition
NOTA carries distinct meanings across different legal traditions and periods. Context — civil law, English conveyancing history, or modern American statutory law — determines which meaning applies.
1. Civil law (Roman and civilian tradition): A mark or brand imposed upon a person by operation of law. The nota functioned as a formal legal stigma — a public designation of infamy or disgrace attaching to persons convicted of certain offenses or adjudged dishonorable by a magistrate. In Roman law, the nota censoria was the mark of censure applied by the censor to a citizen's name in the register, signaling moral or civic disgrace with legal consequences.
2. Old English conveyancing: A preparatory note or memorandum of a charter or deed, drafted before the execution of the formal instrument itself. The nota served as the working draft to which both parties consented, and in disputes over a charter's validity, witness testimony to the nota's preparation and mutual assent could suffice as proof even absent presence at the final execution.
3. Modern American statutory law — National Organ Transplant Act (NOTA): In contemporary legal usage, NOTA most commonly refers to the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984, the principal federal statute governing organ procurement and transplantation in the United States. NOTA established the framework for the national organ transplant system, created the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN), and prohibited the purchase or sale of human organs for transplantation.
Common Language
Wiktionary: Plural of notum.
The ordinary English appearance of nota (or its plural form nota/notae) offers no meaningful purchase on any of the three legal meanings above. The civil law nota as legal stigma, the conveyancing nota as draft instrument, and the statutory NOTA as federal legislation are all technical usages entirely disconnected from the term's function in common language. Researchers encountering NOTA in a modern legal context should immediately assess whether the reference is to the federal statute, not to the historical civilian concept.
Common Confusion
The three meanings of nota are easily conflated by researchers unfamiliar with the source's period and jurisdiction. A text in a Roman law treatise, a medieval English conveyancing manual, and a modern transplant law journal may all use nota or NOTA — but they are referring to entirely different legal concepts. The civil law nota (infamy brand) and the conveyancing nota (draft memorandum) share no conceptual relationship beyond the Latin term. Modern health law sources using NOTA virtually always mean the 1984 federal statute. The acronym form (all capitals, NOTA) is a reliable but not infallible signal of the statutory meaning.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers in the Law Mind corpus will encounter nota in at least three distinct research contexts, and misidentifying which meaning applies can send a search in entirely the wrong direction.
In civil law and Roman law materials, nota appears as part of a broader vocabulary of legal infamy — alongside terms like infamia, ignominia, and turpitudo. Historical dictionary sources treat nota primarily in this sense. Researchers tracing the civilian concept should look for connections to censorial power, civic status, and the Roman law of persons.
In English legal history and conveyancing materials, the nota as draft charter is a procedural artifact. Burrill preserves a Latin passage illustrating its evidentiary function: witness presence at the nota's preparation, with both parties' consent, could establish proof of the underlying transaction. This is significant for researchers working with medieval land records or early English documentary evidence, where the nota may appear as a distinct stage in the instrument's lifecycle rather than as the operative deed itself.
The modern statutory meaning (National Organ Transplant Act) dominates current legal research. NOTA's prohibition on organ trafficking, its creation of OPTN, and its framework for living donor protections are active areas of litigation and regulatory development. Researchers moving between historical and modern sources must be alert to the complete semantic rupture: the 1984 statute shares nothing with the Roman or English meanings except the letters.
Cross-corpus alert: The Law Mind Health Law & Bioethics Encyclopedia entry on organ transplantation law addresses NOTA's statutory structure in detail. Researchers arriving at that entry from a Roman law or conveyancing search have almost certainly followed the wrong trail.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both the first and second editions) and Burrill's Law Dictionary align on the civil law meaning: nota as a legally imposed mark or brand signifying infamy. All three cite Mackeld's Roman Law as authority — Black's to section 135, Burrill to sections 134–135 of volume 1. This consistency reflects the standard civilian synthesis available to nineteenth-century American legal lexicographers.
Burrill adds the English conveyancing meaning absent from both Black's editions, including the Latin passage on evidentiary sufficiency. This is the most practically distinctive contribution of the historical sources: Burrill's entry signals that nota had a procedural life in English land law entirely separate from its Roman stigma meaning.
What the historical dictionaries miss entirely, predictably, is the modern statutory meaning. The 1984 NOTA postdates all three sources by a century or more. Researchers relying solely on historical dictionary sources for NOTA will find no bridge to the contemporary health law usage.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Organ Transplantation Law — NOTA, UNOS Allocation, and Living Donor Protections (The Law Mind Health Law & Bioethics Encyclopedia) [health_57]