Notes: This is our first of two classes on blockchains and smart contracts. In my mind, at least, Cohney and Hoffman’s Transactional Scripts builds on our discussion of Solum/Chung and Feigin, because this is yet another paper about how technical facts produce legal effects.
Questions:
What is a smart contract? (Do you agree with Cohney and Hoffman’s attempt to replace it with “transactional script”?)
Was Cohney and Hoffman’s description of smart contracts accurate in 2020? Is it accurate now in 2023?
Critique the following argument: “People who use a smart contract intend to have it enforce their transaction rather than have the legal system do it. Therefore, the legal system should always defer to the smart contract and should never, under any circumstances interfere with it.”
Critique the following argument: “People who use a smart contract intend to enter into an enforceable agreement. Therefore, a smart contract is also a legal contract. A court should enforce the legal contract and ignore whatever the smart contract does.”
What should happen when a smart contract has a bug?
What should happen if A convinces B to enter into a smart contract by lying about what the smart contract does?
Gregory Klass, How to Interpret a Vending Machine, 7 Georgetown Law Technology Review 69 (2023). Higher-level and more abstracted than Cohney and Hoffman, but also quite thoughtful about what contract law does.
James Grimmelmann, All Smart Contracts Are Ambiguous, 2 Journal of Law and Innovation 1 (2019). My take on the interpretation problem for smart contracts.