Book-Smart, Not Street-Smart: Blockchain-Based Smart Contracts and The Social Workings of Law
Book-Smart, Not Street-Smart: Blockchain-Based Smart Contracts and The Social Workings of Law
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读书智能，而不是街道智能：基于区块链的智能合约和法律的社会运作
DOI：
10.17351/ests2017.107
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发表时间：
2017
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
K. Levy
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
K. Levy
本文批评了基于区块链的“智能合约”，其目的是在不依赖集中执法机构的情况下自动安全地执行义务。尽管智能合约确实具有一些可能服务于社会正义和公平目标的功能，但我认为它们是基于对法律的作用以及它如何发挥作用的一个薄弱概念。智能合约专注于合约的技术形式，排除了合约运作的社会背景，以及人们使用它们的复杂方式。在现实世界中，契约义务是通过各种社会机制来执行的，而不是通过正式的裁决来执行的——而且契约的许多功能在本质上并不是明确合法的，甚至不是为了正式执行而设计的。我描述了人们参与的三类合同实践（包括表面上无法执行的条款，包括故意不明确的条款，以及故意不执行可执行的条款）来说明合同实际上是如何“运作”的。智能合约技术忽略了人们将合约作为社会资源来管理彼此关系的事实。它们有意引入的不灵活性，可能会使法律通常适用的一些社会用途短路。因此，我建议关注合约的社会和关系背景是讨论、开发和部署智能合约的基本考虑因素。
This paper critiques blockchain-based “smart contracts,” which aim to automatically and securely execute obligations without reliance on a centralized enforcement authority. Though smart contracts do have some features that might serve the goals of social justice and fairness, I suggest that they are based on a thin conception of what law does, and how it does it. Smart contracts focus on the technical form of contract to the exclusion of the social contexts within which contracts operate, and the complex ways in which people use them. In the real world, contractual obligations are enforced through all kinds of social mechanisms other than formal adjudication—and contracts serve many functions that are not explicitly legal in nature, or even designed to be formally enforced. I describe three categories of contracting practices in which people engage (the inclusion of facially unenforceable terms, the inclusion of purposefully underspecified terms, and willful nonenforcement of enforceable terms) to illustrate how contracts actually “work.” The technology of smart contracts neglects the fact that people use contracts as social resources to manage their relations. The inflexibility that they introduce, by design, might short-circuit a number of social uses to which law is routinely put. Therefore, I suggest that attention to the social and relational contexts of contracting are essential considerations for the discussion, development, and deployment of smart contracts.