Representative documents of title. Essay on the legal representation of property by documents of title in private law

It is common to assert that a document represents property: a bill of exchange is said to represent a receivable, a bill of lading to represent goods, a book-entry account to represent a security or a depositary receipt to represent shares, etc. These are therefore documents of title. However, what does this mean? Is it a genuine mechanism to represent property by documents in private law or is it a misnomer? First, a study of such documents will establish the existence of legal representation of property by certificates in private law, equivalent to the representation of persons. However, it would seem not to be a unitary mechanism and a distinction must therefore be made between two techniques of legal representation of property by documents: the direct representation of property by a document and the indirect representation of a set of properties assembled in a fiduciary trust by certificates. Next, an analysis of implementation of the legal representation of property by certificates in private law, conducted to test the relevance of the theory, shows that it is not always possible to create any type of such documents freely for any kind of property. Such freedom applies only to documents that are directly representative of certain property. A study of the implementation of this mechanism also emphasizes that the creation of a document of title leads to difficulties that may be overcome by enacting some rules.