Autorizado/a and “authorized” should perhaps be classified as partial cognates, since in many legal contexts autorizado/a may certainly be translated as “authorized.” Examples include expressions such as distribuidor autorizado (“authorized distributor”); firma autorizada (“authorized signature”); personal autorizado (“authorized personnel), capital social autorizado (“authorized share capital”) or uso no autorizado de la marca (“unauthorized trademark use”). But, for example, when referring to notarial instruments autorizado generally means “certified.” In that regard, a documento autorizado por notario is a “document certified by a notary,” a “notarially-certified instrument” or perhaps simply a “notarial (or) notarized document (or) instrument.”

And autorizado/a may also mean “authoritative,” as in la más autorizada opinion (“the most authoritative opinion”) or la versión más autorizada (“the most authoritative version”). Thus, the expression autorizada doctrina may be appropriately translated as “authoritative academic opinion” or “authoritative legal scholarship” when doctrina refers to the writings of law professors and legal scholars. And in an additional context, la autorizada doctrina del Tribunal Constitucional denotes the “authoritative caselaw of the Constitutional Court,” doctrina in this sense referring to the court’s doctrina jurisprudencial, its “established (or) settled caselaw”.