NOTARIES - A Profession between State and Market


AN ARTICLE BY PROF. GISELA SHAW
[Please click on www.giselashaw.com for Prof. Shaw's website]

English original of a "report" submitted for subsequent discussion at the 38th annual Congress of the French notarial organisation
Mouvement Jeune Notariat held in San Francisco, 18-24 November 2007.

Published (in French) in
Droit et Économie. Actes du 38e Congrès Mouvement Jeune Notariat, San Francisco, 18-24 novembre 2007, 158-180.


ABSTRACT

Civil law notariats are facing a challenge of previously unknown proportions. This challenge has two main sources: economic globalisation on the one hand, and the European Commission’s liberalisation project on the other. Notaries, a highly regulated and nation-focused profession, are having to reassess their chances of continuing prosperity, indeed, survival in this wholly novel context. This paper analyses the wider context within which all this is happening, that is the clash between two socio-political, economic and legal cultures: the civil law culture of continental Europe and the common law culture of Great Britain, the U. S. A. and former Commonwealth countries, with the latter being clearly favoured by the European Commission as well as by global business and commerce.


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