Reconstructing The Role of Notaries in Electronic Commerce : A Notary-Based Digital Authentication Model for Ensuring Legal Certainty in Electronic Contracts

Abstract

The digital transformation of commerce through electronic system (e-commecer) has fundamentally shifted the paradigm of contract law from physical interaction-based agreements to technology-driven transactions. Although electronic contracts have gained legal recognition, their practical implementation continues to face fundamental challenge, particulary in ensuring legal certainty, identity verivication, legal capacity, and the validity of consent, which is often reduce to a mere “click to agree“ formality. These conditions reveal a structural gap between classical contract law principles and the realities of digital transactions. This study aims to critically examine the validity of electronic contracts under indonesian law and to reconstruct the role of notaries in ensuring legal certainty within digital transactions. The research employs a normative juridicial method combined with statutory, conceptual, and comparative approaches, analyzing legal frameworks in the Eropean Union, the United States, and Singapore. The finding indicate that te primary weakness lies in the absence of robust identity authentication mechanisms and the lack of reliable authority to verify the legal capacity of contracting parties. Therefore, this study proposes the Notary-Bases digital Authentication model (NDAM) as a alegal reconstruction framework that positions notaries as digital trust authorites. The model integrates digital identity verification, legal capacity assessment, contract authentication, and electronic signature validation within a unifies system.the main contribution of this research lies in the development of a normative model that bridges the structural gap between classical contract law and the digital ecosystem, thereby enhacing legal certainty and trust in electronic transactions.