Ross Alexander
John Marshall alumnus Ross Alexander’s comparisons on the role of the notary public in the United States and the European Union led him to write not just a law school paper, but a book that is now available in Spain.
Alexander (JD ’12, LLM/IBT ’12) took the LLM class “The EU and the Legal Profession” that offered the opportunity for an exchange to Spain in 2011. That trip sparked his interest on the work of notaries.
“We visited the Notary in Barcelona. I knew little about the civil law notarial profession and its importance in Europe,” he said. He learned that notaries “are an additional pillar in the European legal system, next to judges and attorneys.”
In most of the United States, the notary public follows common law. The notary is not a profession, but a responsibility that is approved by the Secretary of State. A notary’s stamp, or notarization, is meant to prevent fraud and forgery. The notary acts as an official and unbiased witness to the identity of the person who comes before the notary for a specific purpose, such as verifying papers for foreign and international business.
Alexander said when he was completing his 30-page required paper for the class, he did a comparison of the notarial profession in Louisiana, a civil law state. He then learned Alabama and Florida also used civil law notaries. His research expanded the paper to more than 60 pages, complete with footnotes.
“When I finished the paper, I did have a wealth of information that Adjunct Professor Ramon Mullerat thought would be of interest to notaries in Spain,” Alexander said.
Mullerat is with the law firm of IURIS VALLS Abogados in Barcelona. For John Marshall, he has taught International Commercial Arbitration, Transnational Legal Practice Issues, and The EU and the Legal Profession, in the International Business and Trade Law LLM Program.
Alexander spent all of 2012 editing sections and working with Professor Miriam Anderson of the University of Barcelona Faculty of Law who translated the work. The pair spent time working through many colloquial and legal language issues that could too easily get lost in translation.
Alexander thought his piece was going to be part of a larger collection, but to his surprise his work has been published as “La fucion del notario en los sistemas de civil law y common law en la era de la globalization”, the publisher’s take on: “Globalization and the Civil Law Notarial Profession: the Effects of the European Notarial Model on the U.S. and What the Southeast States Can Learn.”
Alexander is serving as a staff editor for the Global Markets Law Journal, an online journal hosted by The John Marshall Law School’s Center for International Law that examines the law of capital markets, including securities, commodities, futures, options, derivatives and related issues.
He hopes to use his legal skills as an attorney in international trade law. His undergraduate degree in business administration is from Alma College. He worked for a large regional bank before attending law school.
