Civil Law Notaries Research Articles

Global Legal Standards: Common Rules to Protect Property and Businesses

I decided to make you familiar with an aspect of American property law. You may not realize that a formalistic approach is taken regarding the necessity of consent to form contracts often presented to consumers, including subprime mortgage borrowers who signed the notes (which are themselves contracts) and mortgage documents to transfer the property to lenders. Because many who give what is known as objective consent ie they sign the paper incorporating an agreement, but they do not understand the terms of the contract or the impact on them, I argue that the form contract may protect businesses that use these, but not the property of those consumers/borrowers. These types of “take it or leave it” contracts are known as adhesion contracts. In subprime mortgages lenders offer borrowers form contracts (promissory notes) which the borrower must sign in order to obtain the loan. There is no negotiation of the terms of the note or the mortgage document.A significant part of the subprime crisis in residential real estate in the United States is due to a lack of subjective consent to the contracts entered into regarding the subprime mortgage loans. Then, of course because of globalization of investments this economic crisis affected investors worldwide. As was presented at the meeting of the Italian Civil Law Notaries in Torino in January 2008, many of these global investors trusted the US regulators and U.S. ratings agencies only to learn that neither was working effectively or as investors believed.

Subprime: Real Estate Frauds, Mortgage Frauds and Legal Certainty

This paper was presented to the Italian Civil Law Notaries at their conference in Turin Italy. It responds to their concerns about the subprime crisis in the United States which is negatively affecting Italian investors. Part I of the article explains commodificaiton of real estate including mortgages and REITs; explains the funciton of mortgage backed securities, collateralized debt obligations (CDO) and securitization of real estate debt. Part II describes the history of the subprime loans in the United States, including predatory lending and ascribes fault to the absence of adequate regulation.

New functions of Hungarian civil law notaries

In Hungary the codification of the civil law is just now progressing; the National Assembly is currently debating the Proposition for the new Civil Code replacing the Code of 1959. The Bill also affects the Hungarian notariat, which proudly looks back to a past of 700 years, and is conferring several new powers on the organisation.In the medieval Hungary the activities requiring public authenticity were performed by two types of institutions, the locus authenticus operated by the Church and the secular civil law notary. The loci authentici were succeeded by the Latin type of notariat in 1875. Following the 1948 Communist takeover, the Latin type of notariat fell victim to the transformation of the justice system after the Soviet model. It was not until after 1991 that the private type of notariat in harmony with the Hungarian traditions could resume its operation in the end.At present two main groups of cases fall within the competence of the civil law notaries: conducting certain non-litigious proceeding...

Does the Rest of the World Need the 'Civil Law Notary Model'? A Preliminary Answer from the Real Estate Crisis in the United States and China

Does the Rest of the World Need the 'Civil Law Notary Model'? A Preliminary Answer from the Real Estate Crisis in the United States and China

Berlin to Dublin to Beijing: Blockchain’s trail

In this article Ugo Bechini (a Civil Law Notary in Genoa, Italy) considers Blockchain technology and describes the potential roles for both open and permissioned Blockchains in secure indelible transactions – highlighting the opportunities and challenges presented for regulatory oversight and international cooperation.
 Index words: Blockchain technology, cryptographic keys, ledgers, indelible transfers, law and legislation