Robert Rennie and Stewart Brymer, CONVEYANCING IN THE ELECTRONIC AGE Edinburgh: W Green & Son (www.wgreen.co.uk), 2008. xix + 206 pp + companion CD. ISBN 9780414017214. £81.40.
| Published date | 01 May 2009 |
| Date | 01 May 2009 |
| Author | John Glover |
| Pages | 357-359 |
| DOI | 10.3366/E1364980909001632 |
The front cover of this work describes it as “the only text available on the full legal implications of ARTL”. This both under- and over-sells. The book is not just about Automated Registration of Title to Land (ARTL) but more broadly about new technology issues in Scottish conveyancing; the discussion of fax and e-mail transmission of missives being particularly valuable. Conversely, with only 100 pages of substantive text (the remainder being 14 appendices of statutory and other material), the authors do not attempt to address every legal issue in ARTL. For example, the contractual terms and conditions of use of the ARTL system receive only passing mention and there is no discussion of the terms of the Certificate Policy and associated documentation which govern relationships within the public key infrastructure used to provide digital signatures to system users. This is not necessarily a criticism. By limiting their subject matter the authors produce a very readable work which is likely to be useful to practising conveyancers and also to appeal to students. A fuller examination of the more technical aspects of the governance of ARTL would inevitably be far less accessible.
Following a short introduction, the longest chapter rehearses the law relating to execution of paper deeds under the Requirements of Writing (Scotland) Act 1995. Statutory personal bar under section 1(3) of the 1995 Act then deservedly receives a chapter to itself. This facet of the Act has been subject to an atypically large amount of recent judicial and academic consideration and many readers will find this a helpful update. This chapter concludes on the applicability of statutory personal bar to electronic documents.
Next comes the already mentioned discussion of faxed and e-mail missives. In the context of e-mail, the authors note the distinction between a plain text e-mail and the situation in which a signed paper formal letter is scanned and then transmitted as an attachment. The former clearly cannot achieve the degree of formal validity required by the 1995 Act for the constitution of a contract relating to land. However the authors suggest that, if the decision of the sheriff in
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