Judge.me - Transnational Law (or Small Claims Court for the Internet)

[Stephen Gornick]

Judge.me got a little publicity in the past week.  I didn't see anything here on BitcoinTalk, even though it should be a topic of great interest here.  So here are some links that provide some good reading:

 - http://entrepreneur-stories.com/dont-judge-me-for-wanting-to-fix-the-legal-system-peter-jans-celis/

 - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4015142
 - http://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/t7eil/i_am_the_ancap_founder_of_judgeme_ask_me_anything/

Judge.me is by Peter-Jan Celis (forum user BitFlow):
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=37156

Let me tell you a secret: I first applied with a Bitcoin related idea to Startup Chile, putting my judge.me idea to the background because Bitcoin was exploding at the time. We wanted to create a futures market for next gen mining technology, virtual options that materialized into physical mining when the next tech became available. This would stabilize Bitcoin we reasoned. Than Bitcoin crashed, I had a fallout with my co-founder and I came to Startup Chile alone (I was the recipient of the grant) and switched back to the judge.me idea.
So yeah, I would certainly be willing to integrate with Bitcoin. The new escrow aspect can potentially be very useful for judge.me to track payments by losing parties to prevailing parties. My goal for the next 6 months is turning judge.me in a platform rather than a service, so this escrow connection could tell me which user profiles to flag as not trustable (because they did not honor the arbitration award).
Please feel free to send me email via the "Contact Support" button on judge.me or by mailing the email address "pj with than an @ and than judge.me".

 - http://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/t7eil/i_am_the_ancap_founder_of_judgeme_ask_me_anything/c4k82jl

1. Yes I am an anarcho-capitalist and this is the reason I started the company.
2. Judge Judy is indeed arbitration, where parties waive their right for privacy in return for a free arbitration.
3. Ancapistan would fundamentally be a Kritarchy (rule of judges), so arbitrator reputation is crucial and case law can develop from that. Also, even "ex aequo et bono" arbitration simply means applying contract law in practice.

 - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4017784

I believe that people will increasingly care about their reputation on the internet, and as a result enforcement of arbitration awards could start happening by ostracism, i.e. warning the community not to do business with people who fail to make the prevailing party whole again.

 - http://entrepreneur-stories.com/dont-judge-me-for-wanting-to-fix-the-legal-system-peter-jans-celis/

Transnational Arbitration - Arbitration not controlled by national law:
 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4-WByzfiEQ

[1713967520]

1713967520

[repentance]

It has been mentioned in a few threads.  It's useful for straight up civil matters but not for matters where a criminal action has led to failure to honour a contract (eg where exchanges have been hacked or banks have frozen exchange user funds due to AML/KYC requirements).

[JDBound]

I'm hoping to read "The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State" by Benson here shortly, but could anyone elucidate the issue of enforcement sans the New York Convention for me? Is it possible to provide a service like this w/o said convention as a basis?

[repentance]

I'm hoping to read "The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State" by Benson here shortly, but could anyone elucidate the issue of enforcement sans the New York Convention for me? Is it possible to provide a service like this w/o said convention as a basis?

At a local level, sure.  Lots of legal systems regard certain types of mediation as binding and allow for something called "consent orders".  Without some kind of overarching reciprocal agreement, though, (treaties and conventions are essentially just civil law agreements between nations) or legislative requirement (such as a full faith and credit law) there's not really any legal basis for enforcement across jurisdictions.  As it stands, even when those requirements are met, there's no certainty that one state will domesticate the orders of another jurisdiction.

Sharia courts in Western countries would be an example of this.  People can voluntarily subject themselves to Sharia justice, but the ability to enforce its provisions is extremely limited.