News

Update 2017-06-04

Workshop programme posted: see programme page of website

Update 2017-05-05

Workshop date confirmed: SmartLaw will take place on the Friday (16th June) of the week of ICAIL

Update 2017-04-12

Invited speaker: Peter McBurney

Update 2017-03-01

Invited speaker: Roger Brownsword

The Smart Contracts and Law workshop

Smart contracts are promoted as means to leverage efficiency, security and impartiality in the execution of an agreement, thereby reducing the costs in implementing contracts, facilitating their use and execution and increasing trust between contracting parties. Smart contracts can be implemented in open blockchain systems that are used both to store the smart contracts and to execute contractual instructions. Blockchain is an emerging technology for decentralised and transactional data sharing across a large network of untrusted participants. It enables new forms of distributed software architectures, where agreement on shared states can be established without trusting a central integration point Many technical and legal challenges arise with the rapid development of these new technologies. For example, building applications on blockchain is challenging, as there are many variants and configuration choices, while one can question the legal bindingness of smart contracts. The aim of the workshop is to promote research at the intersection of smart contracts, blockchain systems and law. Hence the workshop welcomes submissions at this intersection.

To find out more the information links at top right