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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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