{"title":"Contracts: Ex Machina","authors":"K. Werbach, N. Cornell","doi":"10.5040/9781509937059.ch-001","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Smart contracts are self-executing digital transactions using decentralized cryptographic mechanisms for enforcement. They were theorized more than twenty years ago, but the recent development of Bitcoin and blockchain technologies has rekindled excitement about their potential among technologists and industry. Startup companies and major enterprises alike are now developing smart contract solutions for an array of markets, purporting to offer a digital bypass around traditional contract law. For legal scholars, smart contracts pose a significant question: Can smart contracts offer a superior solution to the problem that contract law addresses? In this article, we aim to understand both the potential and the limitations of smart contracts. We conclude that smart contracts offer novel possibilities, may significantly alter the commercial world, and will demand new legal responses. But smart contracts will not displace contract law. Understanding why not brings into focus the essential role of contract law as a remedial institution. In this way, smart contracts actually can illuminate the role of contract law more than they can obviate it.","PeriodicalId":47625,"journal":{"name":"Duke Law Journal","volume":"67 1","pages":"313-382"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8000,"publicationDate":"2017-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"140","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Duke Law Journal","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.5040/9781509937059.ch-001","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"LAW","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 140
Abstract
Smart contracts are self-executing digital transactions using decentralized cryptographic mechanisms for enforcement. They were theorized more than twenty years ago, but the recent development of Bitcoin and blockchain technologies has rekindled excitement about their potential among technologists and industry. Startup companies and major enterprises alike are now developing smart contract solutions for an array of markets, purporting to offer a digital bypass around traditional contract law. For legal scholars, smart contracts pose a significant question: Can smart contracts offer a superior solution to the problem that contract law addresses? In this article, we aim to understand both the potential and the limitations of smart contracts. We conclude that smart contracts offer novel possibilities, may significantly alter the commercial world, and will demand new legal responses. But smart contracts will not displace contract law. Understanding why not brings into focus the essential role of contract law as a remedial institution. In this way, smart contracts actually can illuminate the role of contract law more than they can obviate it.
期刊介绍：
The first issue of what was to become the Duke Law Journal was published in March 1951 as the Duke Bar Journal. Created to provide a medium for student expression, the Duke Bar Journal consisted entirely of student-written and student-edited work until 1953, when it began publishing faculty contributions. To reflect the inclusion of faculty scholarship, the Duke Bar Journal became the Duke Law Journal in 1957. In 1969, the Journal published its inaugural Administrative Law Symposium issue, a tradition that continues today. Volume 1 of the Duke Bar Journal spanned two issues and 259 pages. In 1959, the Journal grew to four issues and 649 pages, growing again in 1970 to six issues and 1263 pages. Today, the Duke Law Journal publishes eight issues per volume. Our staff is committed to the purpose set forth in our constitution: to publish legal writing of superior quality. We seek to publish a collection of outstanding scholarship from established legal writers, up-and-coming authors, and our own student editors.
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