On legal contracts, imperative and declarative smart contracts, and blockchain systems

@article{Governatori2018OnLC,
  title={On legal contracts, imperative and declarative smart contracts, and blockchain systems},
  author={Guido Governatori and Florian Idelberger and Zoran Milosevic and R{\'e}gis Riveret and Giovanni Sartor and Xiwei Xu},
  journal={Artificial Intelligence and Law},
  year={2018},
  volume={26},
  pages={377-409}
}
Abstract This paper provides an analysis of how concepts pertinent to legal contracts can influence certain aspects of their digital implementation through smart contracts, as inspired by recent developments in distributed ledger technology. We discuss how properties of imperative and declarative languages including the underlying architectures to support contract management and lifecycle apply to various aspects of legal contracts. We then address these properties in the context of several… 
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127 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
4
Background Citations
49
Methods Citations
3

127 Citations

Symboleo: Towards a Specification Language for Legal Contracts
TLDR
This paper proposes a formal specification language for contracts, called Symboleo, where contracts consist of collections of obligations and powers that define the legal contract’s compliant executions, to enable formally verifying contracts to detect requirements-level issues and to generate executable smart contracts (e.g., on blockchain technology).
Hercule: Representing and Reasoning About Norms as a Foundation for Declarative Contracts Over Blockchain
TLDR
Hercule operationalizes declarative contracts over semistructured databases, the underlying representation for practical blockchain such as Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum, and exploits the map-reduce capabilities of such stores to compute norm states.
A Survey of Smart Contract Formal Specification and Verification
TLDR
This survey investigates formal models and specifications of smart contracts presented in the literature and presents a systematic overview in order to understand the common trends and identify gaps.
A Legal Interpretation of Choreography Models
TLDR
An approach at connecting existing models to Legal Ontologies (LOs) on the example of choreography models is explored, effectively interpreting them as legal contracts.
Smart Contract and Blockchain Based Contract Management System
TLDR
This paper presents theoretical and practical research on the possibilities of applying smart contracts in the field of law and a contract management system which allows users to conclude contracts based on blockchain technology and an example of a smart allotment contract written using the Solidity programming language.
A Unifying Model of Legal Smart Contracts
TLDR
A unifying model is given that encapsulates essential components of legal smart contracts in a model-driven architecture and may serve as a basis for comparing existing modeling frameworks, which is demonstrated by applying it to a set of eight distinct languages.
Smart Contracts: From Formal Specification to Blockchain Code
TLDR
This thesis contributes a syntax and axiomatic semantics for Symboleo, with concepts rooted in a legal ontology, and supported by an editor, and provides an analysis of possible target smart contract programming languages.
Legally Enforceable Smart-Contract Languages
TLDR
This study reviews existing Smart Contract Languages (SCL) and identifies properties that are critical to any future SCL for drafting legally binding contracts and finds 10 SCL properties that enable legally compliant DAOs.
Legal smart contracts in Ethereum Block chain: Linking the dots
TLDR
This paper addresses the problem of contract update by introducing a new versioning system that keeps track of the changes and links the different versions using a linked list, and proposes a system architecture where the user interface, the application logic and the blockchain are smoothly integrated in a manner that each part of the system contributes for producing a flexible and transparent execution.
Regulating Blockchain Smart Contracts with Agent-Based Markets
TLDR
This paper presents an overview of the agreement pipeline, considering regulation-enabled systems and compares the implementation of auction agreements purely on the blockchain with a hybrid approach where markets are active agents that can ensure regulation outside the contractual phase and contract execution runs on blockchain.
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