Smart Contracts Session 2 Transcript

Transcript

We start with legal relationships.

So we got a very broad context here which is the law.

What is the law.

It's a big question.

Generally it's associated with rules and it's associated with relationships.

So we've got this very broad area that looks at social policy and how rules are developed to support

the social policy of a society.

And the relationships of the members of the society if we narrow that down a bit we've got some broad

categorizations that we can go through criminal law.

Everyone's familiar with that contract law.

Most people have come across contracts tort law bit different.

But let's explain.

So criminal law regulates the relationship between members of society and the state.

So you have obligations to comply with rules set by the state by virtue of being a citizen of the state

contracts narrower they relate to voluntary relationships established by citizens generally for economic

purposes.

So if you're a natural person what we call an individual or a corporate person a company or some other

kind of corporate entity then you have what's known as legal personality you're able to enter into relationships

and expect those to be enforced by the courts of your country.

Contracts is the broad area that regulates those relationships.

We'll get into the detail as we go through.

Then finally I mentioned tort law.

How does that fit in.

So tort law has categories of harm caused by one party to another.

The most famous one of those is negligence.

Generally you may be aware of that.

And what we're looking at in tort law is had a society organized relationships between parties that

haven't voluntarily entered into that relationship themselves.

So in contrast with a contract where the parties have agreed to enter into a relationship tort looks

at the area where one party has been harmed or affected by another party.

There isn't a context of contractual agreement between them.

Those three areas are all relevant to crypto currencies criminal law because you may offend the regulatory

rules set by the states in relation to your offering generally of a cryptocurrency contract.

That's where we're focused for most of this session and taught as well because wherever is there may

be no contract and crypto currencies are often the example of that.

But there may be a requirement for a party to have a remedy because of harm done by another party.

So we've got these characterizations that we'll look at with generally looking for the purposes of this

session at the laws of the UK where I work the US I do a lot of my work and Europe where I do some work

and have a lot of colleagues.

What's the difference.

Well each state has its own laws.

There are many common features of the laws but they are all different per jurisdiction.

If we look at how to categorize the different types of law the US and UK are what's known as Common

Law jurisdictions broadly that means that the laws are made somewhat by judges.

So the legislation sets out rules but there is also some discretion for judges to apply the rules and

to make the law in European jurisdictions.

They generally have what's known as a civil law background and there's less discretion on the judges.

So in policy terms you're balancing flexibility on the one hand with certainty on the other hand lots

of legal questions come down to these kinds of policy choices and balances.

I'm simplifying.

So if you're a lawyer don't write in but that's a context that will come back to as we go through the

other parts of the session.