DIGITAL SIGNATURE AND OTHER OBSOLETE, CONTEMPORARY AND MODERN MEANS OF EXPRESSING CONSENT IN NOTARIAL ACTIVITIES
DIGITAL SIGNATURE AND OTHER OBSOLETE, CONTEMPORARY AND MODERN MEANS OF EXPRESSING CONSENT IN NOTARIAL ACTIVITIES

Summary/Abstract: Digital signature has not been an unknown tool for most notaries for quite some time,especially in the European area. Whether it is used solely for a more efficient communicationwith the public registers that are used very frequently in notarial activities or even for certaintypes of notarial instruments, this mechanism has become as present in the life of each notary asinkpot pens used to be in the past.Within the same Latin law system, some States confer a greater legal value to such amechanism, while other States limit its application to internal procedures. Although its degree ofuse is very different from one State to another, in some States (such as France) digital signaturereplaces holographic signature even in the authentication procedure, which is one of the mostsignificant notarial activities. Of course, for the time being, this mechanism is only an alternativeand does not exclude the possibility for the parties to continue to use the traditional means ofexpressing their consent.Also providing a historical overview of the way consent is externalized, this study aims toexamine the extent to which digital signature is currently used by public notaries and how it hasbecome an indispensable tool in current notarial activities. At the same time, the study alsoprovides a perspective on extending the use of digital signature in several types of notarialprocedures or even the possibility to replace digital signature with systems that identify peoplebased on artificial intelligence, such as digital fingerprint and facial recognition.

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