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Abstract: In Civil Law systems of the Roman-European tradition, fe pública (literal translation “public faith”) is the state’s guaranty of certain facts and of their legal value. Typically, Notaries Public act as the state’s agents to administer fe pública by certifying and registering documents and by carrying out a series of other solemn duties, subject to a code of professional ethics and state discipline for its violation. In such Civil Law systems, Notaries Public constitute an elite corps of lawyers admitted by the state upon special examination, usually by the state supreme court. Documents and facts certified by fe pública enjoy probative value in all legal proceedings. Documents from one Civil Law country move with relative ease to another. International certification of facts becomes a relatively simple matter. Once outside shared tradition of fe pública, however, assimilation of documents and facts from one system to another becomes a tortuous or even impossible process. Frequently, documents or facts from the United States fail before judicial or other authorities in Latin America, because the U.S. system has no means of certifying them by fe pública. This article makes the argument that U.S. lawyers, admitted to practice as officers of their state’s supreme courts and subject to continuing discipline by those courts, in fact approximate Notaries Public in their professional ethics and duties, and administer guaranties analogous to fe pública although that term may be unknown in the U.S. The article has the objective of enabling understanding between the Civil Law and the Common Law traditions, on a point of surpassing importance for international commerce and litigation, specifically to facilitate the certification of documents and facts between the two systems.
Civil law, Notaries, international law
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