TITLE:
On the Limited Liability of Cooperative Notary Public Institutions
AUTHORS:
Mingyu Wang
KEYWORDS:
Cooperative Notary Public Institutions Public, Notary System Reform, Types of Civil Subjects, Non-Legal Person Organizations
JOURNAL NAME:
Beijing Law Review,
Vol.13 No.4,
November
17,
2022
ABSTRACT: Article 4 of the Opinions of the Ministry of Justice on Promoting the Work of Cooperative Notary Public Institutions stipulates that a cooperative notary public institution is featured by “being jointly financed by eligible notaries public” and “the assets of which being jointly owned by the cooperators and the liabilities of the institutions being limited to their total assets”. The controversy thus arises over the liabilities of cooperative notary public institutions. Limited liability is a special application of civil liability in the field of commercial law. It is a statutory risk allocation mechanism, which is part of the organization laws regarding the separation of assets and liabilities and not necessarily related to legal personality. Defining cooperative notary public institutions as “non-legal person organizations”, through the adoption of notary public legislation, not only meets the practical needs of the reform of the notary public system, but also conforms to the framework of civil subjects under the Civil Code.