“Shall” is mandatory and “may” is permissive.
Cal. Evid. Code § 11
PRELIMINARY PROVISIONS AND CONSTRUCTION
Known as the Evidence Code
The act spans §§ 1–12 (12 sections).
Applied in 7 court decisions — leading case 16 Cal. 4th 90 - People v. Ledesma (1997)
Most recently applied in 238 Cal. App. 4th 370 - Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. v. 6354 Figarden General Partnership (July 2015)
Enacted by Stats. 1965, Ch. 299.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: California Legislative Information. Reproduced from public-domain California statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.