A critical commentary to a recent paper on the force of the first entry in the Mortgages Act of 1861

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to refute the view taken by Celestino Pardo on the force of first entry in the Mortgage Act of 1861 by applying the same criteria employed by the author. The paper critically analyses the effect of titles not registered in the old registry; of the value that registrations entries would have had in the Mortgages registry after the law went effect, and of the first registrations of titles prior to the entry into force of the Law. Through his study one can infer that the third party to which the Law refers may not ever be the cause of the first registration entry, and that the conflict of titles is one of the assumptions included in the original Article 34. This paper directly criticizes the historical basis claimed by the so-called dualist thesis. But it is also, and above all, an attempt to refute the widespread view that it is the entry in the registry which gives property rights of effectivens erga omnes.