Paper and State - Burdens of Proof - page 147

ordonnance results from a request for inscription, typically by a notary
acting on behalf of a client who has purchased property. The judge is
responsible for establishing the validity of documents provided by the
notary (real estate contract, records of civil status of the parties, etc.) and
for verifying the validity of the request with respect to the property (char-
acteristics of the land parcels, mortgage, liens, etc.). By signing the ordon-
nance , the judge engages his personal responsibility that the information
is correct. Once signed, the ordonnance is transcribed by a specialized clerk
into the appropriate feuillet along with the date the request for inscription
was received. The judge further attests that the information has been cor-
rectly transcribed into the paper registers by signing each inscription.
The top of the feuillets identify the land owner (card indexes for both
land owners and land parcels provide direct access to the relevant feuillets
of the registers) (see figure 6.8). The body of the feuillet is divided vertically
in three main sections: the first records the cadaster reference of the prop-
erty, address, type (e.g., land, housing), reference to the previous owner's
feuillet , reference to the ordonnance that transferred the property to the
present owner, and the nature of the transfer (e.g., sale, donation); for each
property listed in the first section, charges and encumbrances may be listed
in the second section (e.g., right of passage, usufruit ), and the third section
is used for mortgages and liens. Each individual entry in a section of a
feuillet is the result of a separate ordonnance by a judge and associated by
a reference number with a physical (paper) file, the annex. The annex
contains the ordonnance itself and all other related documents the judge
may have consulted and verified in the process of creating the ordonnance—
copies of contracts, cadastre surveys, identity papers of the parties, and
any others.
The large size of registers, the careful visual design of the pages, and
the organization in columns and rows are designed to provide relevant
professionals with a synthetic visualization of the essential information
relative to real estate transactions—for example, the entire set of mortgages
and liens associated with a particular parcel. The registers are public records,
however, open for consultation to anyone with a demonstrable interest
in a transaction, and thus vulnerable to falsification, forgery, and so on. A
request for inscription thus results in the production of two distinct kinds
of records organized in a two-tiered evidential system: signed by the judge,
the ordonnance d'inscription has the evidential force of authentic acts; also