HANDBUCH ZUR GESCHICHTE DES NOTARIATS DER EUROPÄISCHEN TRADITIONEN. Ed by Matthias Schmoeckel and Werner Schubert Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft (www.nomos-druck.de), Rheinische Schriften zur Rechtsgeschichte vol 12, 2009. 619 pp. ISBN 9783832940683. €149.

Document Cited in Related
AuthorWilliam M Gordon
DOI10.3366/elr.2010.0309
Published date01 September 2010
Date01 September 2010
Pages518-520

The title, Handbuch, suggests a rather more systematic approach than that adopted, which clearly follows from the origin of the book in a series of conference papers. It examines the position of notaries in most of the states of modern Europe, and in the USA and South America, both of which have or have had strong links with Europe. The decision to look at states rather than at legal systems, the history of which does not neatly follow modern state boundaries, means that there is some overlap and there is also a certain welcome inconsistency in that England and Scotland are given separate chapters while other states, for fairly obvious historical reasons, share chapters, as in the case of Austria and Hungary and Finland and Sweden. Altogether, however, we are given a pretty comprehensive account of the position of notaries within Europe and in former European colonies.

The contributors, writing between them in five languages, seem to have been given considerable freedom in the approach, style and organisation of their respective chapters. Some chapters contain a bibliography, others disperse the literature in the extensive footnotes, and there is commonly but not consistently a summary or abstract in a rather curious mixture of languages. The Scottish chapter (by John Finlay), for instance, has a short summary in Italian while, diplomatically, the summary in the chapter on France is in German and the summary in the German chapter is in French, and perhaps diplomacy rather than consistency directed the editorial hand. What would have been very useful in a work so full of information – and probably more useful than summaries or abstracts, which can scarcely do justice to...

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