Common Law and Bitcoin

[jyakulis]

I was just reading about software development and was wondering if there are any updates to be found. It would be great to get rid of lawyers. One aspect of law system (though admittedly I am not a lawyer) is this idea of common law.

The common law (connotation 1) is more malleable than statutory law. First, common law courts are not absolutely bound by precedent, but can (when extraordinarily good reason is shown) reinterpret and revise the law, without legislative intervention, to adapt to new trends in political, legal and social philosophy. Second, the common law (connotation 1) evolves through a series of gradual steps, that gradually works out all the details, so that over a decade or more, the law can change substantially but without a sharp break, thereby reducing disruptive effects.[24] In contrast to common law incrementalism, the legislative process is very difficult to get started, as legislatures tend to delay action until a situation is totally intolerable.[citation needed] For these reasons, legislative changes tend to be large, jarring and disruptive (sometimes positively, sometimes negatively, and sometimes with unintended consequences).



If bitcoin started using common law type contracts would we not start changing legislation without legislators base on court cases? I'm pretty sure in common law the common people render a decision and the judge is merely a mediator.

Anyone know much about it? I'm going to study it further.

[theblacksquid]

Here in the Philippines, we still have a very common law-based system at the Baranggay(Village) level, where each village would have around at most, 2000 people. Decisions are executed by a village leader, with advice from his council of twelve people.

This system is still running along smoothly, settling local disputes, marital spats and so on., and this demonstrates common-law at it's best, where it only involves a relatively small number people.

[jjc326]

Here in the Philippines, we still have a very common law-based system at the Baranggay(Village) level, where each village would have around at most, 2000 people. Decisions are executed by a village leader, with advice from his council of twelve people.

This system is still running along smoothly, settling local disputes, marital spats and so on., and this demonstrates common-law at it's best, where it only involves a relatively small number people.

Is this truly working and keeping people happy?  What if you're not happy with the village leader's decision?  See the good thing about having a bigger scale legal system is you can kind of know what the law is ahead of time instead of just hoping that the village leader sees it your way. 

[theblacksquid]

Here in the Philippines, we still have a very common law-based system at the Baranggay(Village) level, where each village would have around at most, 2000 people. Decisions are executed by a village leader, with advice from his council of twelve people.

This system is still running along smoothly, settling local disputes, marital spats and so on., and this demonstrates common-law at it's best, where it only involves a relatively small number people.

Is this truly working and keeping people happy?  What if you're not happy with the village leader's decision?  See the good thing about having a bigger scale legal system is you can kind of know what the law is ahead of time instead of just hoping that the village leader sees it your way. 

It's working fine for a relatively small community. It's more of an informal way of settling disputes, and will get treated as an Out-of -court settlement if it ever gets any mention in a court of law. Mostly, it's there to prevent the public scandal and unrest that will usually come as a result of actually filing a case against a person in court.

[BitcoinLlama]

Does "your honour, under common law this is so" ever work in a defendant's favor?

[libivan]

(...)
If bitcoin started using common law type contracts would we not start changing legislation without legislators base on court cases? I'm pretty sure in common law the common people render a decision and the judge is merely a mediator.

Anyone know much about it? I'm going to study it further.

I did not understand well your question. What do you mean with "common law type contracts"?

[jubehat]

Whats

[runam0k]

The common law is a set of legal principles developed by decisions of the court over hundreds of years.  It will naturally adapt (slowly, where it needs to) to a new world of contracts based on algorithms and blockchain technology.

If you are asking whether the natural development of the common law can somehow be replicated by smart contracts, or a combination of algorithms and protocols forming a complex framework that is capable of learning from and governing other smart contracts, with the result being that legal principles are developed and applied to new smart contracts, no.  There are human elements involved in the development of the common law - the careful consideration of, among other things, the facts at hand, the commercial intention of the parties, issues of public interest and public policy, and the application of existing law and legal principles to the facts at hand - that are, currently, impossible to replicate.  Mere algorithms do not cut it; this would require ground-breaking Sky Net level AI.

That is not to say that GitHub style repositories cannot exist for the creation of ever more complex smart contracts, and in theory smart contracts should resolve themselves, without the need to involve the courts (because, if done correctly, they should account for all the things that could possibly go wrong), but ultimately people will have to write them and they will not necessarily be bound by precedents.

[Justin00]

Curious about this as well. In all the youtube videos it never works out well

Does "your honour, under common law this is so" ever work in a defendant's favor?