Cieplak and Leefatt, ‘“Smart Contracts”: A Smart Way to Automate Performance’

Introduction:
“The freedom to contract is one of the oldest and most basic tenets of the American legal system. Subject to limited judicial and statutory exceptions, parties have been and are generally afforded carte blanche in determining the terms of a binding agreement and how those terms are memorialized. The recent emergence of “smart contracts,” that are stored and executed using distributed ledger technology, is another step forward in the process of computerized contracts, following electronic delivery of signatures through PDF and fax to today’s digital signature services. What makes smart contracts unique, however, is that they not only involve the automation of contract formation, but also the execution of the contract’s terms …” (more)

Jenny Cieplak and Simon Leefatt, “Smart Contracts”: A Smart Way to Automate Performance, 1 Georgetown Law Technology Review 414 (April 2017)

First posted 2017-04-27 06:42:18

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