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10 J. Intell. Prop. Info. Tech. & Elec. Com. L. 105 (2019)
The Impact of Smart Contracts on Traditional Concepts of Contract Law

handle is hein.journals/jipitec10 and id is 108 raw text is: The Impact of Smart Contracts on Traditional Concepts of Contract Law The Impact of Smart Contracts on Traditional Concepts of Contract Law by Maren K. Woebbeking* Abstract: The concept of smart contracts en- tered the legal discourse on y a few years ago, yet the subject has already given rise to remarkably differ- ent approaches. Wh e some assume that smart con- tracts can be fu y integrated into existing contract aw, others predict that they wl mark the begin- ning of the end of contract aw. The aim of this arti- cle is to contribute to the assessment of smart con- tracts by examining how they can be situated within the traditiona Western concept of contract aw and how they differ from traditiona contracts in the in- dividual phases of a contract's ife cyde. n particu- ar, these findings show that the automated execu- tion of the promises contained in a smart contract, specificaly their technical characteristics, ead to an increased significance of the contract drafting phase compared to the execution phase. Among other as- pects, smart contracts are considerably more dif- ficut to modify than traditiona contracts and they are imited by the fact that the encoding of contracts requires an increased formalization of the contrac- tua terms. On the other hand, the technical archi- tecture of smart contracts offers possibi ities rang- ing from automatic se f-help to the enforcement of egaly unenforceao e agreements. t is precisely this autonomy of smart contracts from existing contract aw thatfina y raises the question of whether an ad- aptation of contract law wil become necessary and what difficu ties such an adaptation would face. © 2019 Maren K. Woebbeking Everybody may disseminate this article by electronic means and make it available for download under the terms and conditions of the Digital Peer Publishing Licence (DPPL). A copy of the license text may be obtained at http://nbn-resolving. de/urn:nbn:de:0009-dppl-v3-en8. Recommended citation: Maren K. Woebbeking, The Impact of Smart Contracts on Traditional Concepts of Contract Law, 10 (2019) JIPITEC 105 para 1. A. Introduction 1 Contracts play a central role for the ordering of liberal market relations and therefore have an irreplaceable importance for Western and other societies. Accordingly, contract law is probably the * Doctoral candidate and research assistant ofProf. Dr. Gerald Spindler, Department of Corporate Law, Civil Law - Internet Law, Copyright and Telecommunications Law, Georg- August-University Goettingen, Germany. 1 E Allan Farnsworth, 'Comparative Contract Law' in Mathias Reimann and Reinhard Zimmermann (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Law (OUP 2016) 901; Arthur von Mehren, 'A General View on Contract', International Encyclopedia of Comparative Law: Contract in General, vol VII/1 (Mohr Siebeck 2008) 19ff.; Caroline Bradley, 'Private most important private law institution of individual self-determination and autonomy and it evolved continuously to respond to the emergence of new contract models.2 Today, like many other legal institutions, it faces the challenges of digitization. Next to Big Data analytics and Artificial Intelligence (Al), especially smart contracts pave the way for a new era of contracting and pose a potential challenge to the prevailing concepts of contract law. International Law-Making for the Financial Markets' (2005) 29 Fordham Int'l L.J. 127, 158f. 2 Regarding the history of the contractual concept in Europe and Germany, see Andreas Thier in HKK, § 311 Abs. 1 Rn. 4ff; on the respective development of society and contract law in the US, see Walter F Pratt, Jr., 'American contract law at the turn of the century' (1988) 39 S. C. L. Rev. 415. 1 jIpiteC 105 2019

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