Notary public in United States
Posted on:3/29/2006
| In the United States, generally speaking, a notary public is a public official appointed by a state government to serve the public as an impartial witness. |
Notaries in the United States are much less closely regulated than notaries in civil law jurisdictions or in most other common law countries. Usually individuals need no special training to obtain a notary public commission; they must only pass a simple test, and have some form of background check or obtain a bond or insurance to ensure their integrity. Most banks have at least one notary present whenever they are open. In the United States, a non-attorney notary may not offer legal advice or prepare documents (with the exception of Louisiana*) and cannot recommend how a person should sign a document or even what type of notarization is necessary.
Each state in the United States has different requirements for becoming a notary public. Some states require that notaries be appointed directly by the state legislature, while in others the individual simply takes an exam and pays a small annual fee. In most states, notaries are administered by the Secretary of State; in Alaska, this function is performed by the office of the Lieutenant Governor.
A Maryland requirement that to obtain a commission, a notary declare his belief in God, as required by the Maryland Constitution, was found by the United States Supreme Court in Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U.S. 488 (1961) to be unconstitutional. Historically, some states required that a notary be a citizen of the United States. However, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the case of Bernal v. Fainter 467 U.S. 216 (1984) (the Fainter case), declared that to be impermissible.
In the U.S., there are reports of notaries (or people claiming to be notaries) having taken advantage of the differing roles of notaries in common law and civil law jurisdictions to engage in the unauthorized practice of law. The victims of such scams are typically illegal immigrants from civil law countries who need assistance with, for example, their immigration papers and want to avoid hiring an attorney. Confusion often results from the mistaken premise that a notary public in the United States serves the same function as a Notario Público in Spanish-speaking countries (which are civil law countries, see below). Prosecutions in such cases are difficult, as the victims are often deported and thus unavailable to testify.
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