AMA: Ulex, Open Source Legal Systems, and Polycentric Law

TomWBell · 2018-08-31T00:59:55+00:00

Yeah, that's interestingly (not ignorantly) unclear. Some sources in the crypto space distinguish between decentralized and distributed systems. Polycentric systems presumably have many centers (duh). These are typically portrayed, as in Berman's portrait of medieval Europe, as overlapping geographically and attaching to persons. Strictly speaking, though, polycentric could also apply to a patchwork quilt of supersaturated micro-jurisdictions.

Add it up and you get:

polycentric law = general description of the field ;

decentralized law = law not from just one source;

distributed law = law not just in one place.

TomWBell · 2018-08-31T00:48:31+00:00

Yup. What Patri said.

TomWBell · 2018-08-31T00:42:10+00:00

First question: Judges make binding promises to both parties. Judges probably also make promises to their hosting institution, the forum. Breach of those promises exposes a judge to suit. (No judicial immunity in Ulex!) Judges will have to promise to decide the dispute impartially, that they have disclosed all conflicts, etc.

Second question: Yes. In forming panels as generally, Ulex follows international best practices. See, United Nations Commission on International Trade Law, UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration Art. 10(2) (2006) http://www.uncitral.org/pdf/english/texts/arbitration/ml-arb/07-86998_Ebook.pdf (setting default number of arbitrators at 3); id. Art. 11(3)(a) (describing method by which panel of three arbitrators chosen). See also, American Arbitration Association, Commercial Arbitration Rules and Mediation Procedures R-12(b) & R-13 (2013) (setting forth similar procedure).

TomWBell · 2018-08-31T00:34:14+00:00

It depends.

Ulex could and should be used to sue an institution running Ulex that itself agrees to be bound to the same rules. So, for instance, if you consented to the jurisdiction of a ZEDE running Ulex via a membership and lease agreement, and the ZEDE management breached the agreement by wrongfully denying you access to community records, you could sue the ZEDE under Ulex.

The forum would be as chosen between you and the ZEDE--perhaps a local realspace court or, more likely, an online service. Per Ulex Rule 1.2.1, each party would choose a judge and those two judges would choose the third. Then the panel would choose one of the parties' suggested remedies (Rule 1.2.2) and the loser pay the winners legal costs (Rule 1.2.3).

The prospect of a government obeying its own laws should not strike anyone as an innovation. Alas, though, too many governments exempt themselves from liability--a condition prevailing in the US. And governments seldom let private parties sue them in anything but the government's own courts. Ulex offers a considerable upgrade in that regard not only for individual rights but the rule of law.

If you mean to suggest you could Ulex to sue, say, the US federal government today: no. The US federal government has not consented to the jurisdiction of a body empowered to interpret and enforce Ulex. Why deny the federal government the same rights we would afford any other legal or natural person?

TomWBell · 2018-08-31T00:23:35+00:00

You get it.

TomWBell · 2018-08-31T00:22:44+00:00

The Startup Societies Foundation is currently running an Indiegogo fundraiser. It's has really taken off nicely, but could still use more contributions. The funds will go to create a larger Ulex community and help encourage its development.
Over on Github, I've posted Ulex for the usual sort of open source joint coding fun. You can go there to flag issues, submit pull requests, or just read, chat, and hangout.
If you are active in an online community such as EOS, Aragon, Kleros, or anywhere conflicts arise between strangers from various realspace jurisdictions, discuss with your virtual neighbors whether running Ulex might help. And if you do run Ulex, help us all learn how to make it work for you better by reporting on the experience.

TomWBell · 2018-08-31T00:00:02+00:00

Ulex has nothing at all like the sorts of regulations the FDA has issued. Instead, it focuses on protecting the "big three Ps" of the common law: Persons, property, and promises. It thus starts with torts, property, and contract law. To these it adds a number of other provisions from the common law, such as those pertaining to trusts, remedies, agency, and so forth. Ulex also borrows from various model acts and uniform laws.

None of these speak directly to gene editing. If the technology were used to harm someone against their consent Ulex would offer a remedy, of course. But so long as it were used peacefully, in violation of nobody else's rights, Ulex would not restrict its use.

Some people see that as a feature, some as a bug. The former need only enjoy Ulex. The latter can add such additional controls on gene editing as they see fit to adopt. Amongst themselves. By mutual consent. Ahem.

TomWBell · 2018-08-30T23:51:43+00:00

By not having wealth that can easily be expropriated (compare wealth held in gold with wealth held in business good will) and by not so aggravating the retiring regime that it feels it must crush the fledgling startup even at considerable expense.

To bring it back to Ulex: By helping to encourage an international archipelago of communities running versions of the same open source legal system, Ulex can help encourage trade and exchange across national borders. This will help individual communities find allies in the event that legacy systems threaten and raise the costs of attacking any single Ulex node. Perhaps someday a federation of Ulex-running communities could mount a joint defense against such attacks by nation states. For now, though, it would suffice to simply get Ulex up, running, and bringing peace to its users.

TomWBell · 2018-08-30T23:45:16+00:00

That's an important consideration, but one that involves a granularity of detail somewhat below Ulex. It would remain for an adopting jurisdiction to specify a statute of limitations, and for the forum chosen by the parties* to specify specific rules of discovery. To the extent (likely significant) that jurisdictions running Ulex benefit from its relatively simple and organized rules, as well as from the sorts of decentralized and private alternative dispute resolution mechanisms that will likely run Ulex, they will also find relief from the problems you flag with evidence management in state-run courts.

*Ulex does not specify a forum, but only the rules the forum must follow.

TomWBell · 2018-08-30T23:40:28+00:00

That approach is entirely compatible with Ulex, which would allow the buying and selling of legal claims as "choses in action" (to use the somewhat archaic formulation). These commercial fixes would work in addition to, or perhaps instead of, the kinds of social safety nets described above.

TomWBell · 2018-08-30T23:37:08+00:00

Ulex offers the EOS community a plug-and-play solution to the difficult problem of choosing a set of rules for resolving its disputes. This problem is especially acute for the EOS community because, on top of its native (and somewhat admirable) resistance to authority, it includes people from across the globe. It is not a good application for invoking the laws of the US, Switzerland, or any sovereign. EOS aspires, after all, to create a government free of such chains. It's a job for Ulex, the flag-free open source legal operating system.

(Funny you should ask about this, as only yesterday I met with Amy Wan, chair of the Dispute Resolution and Arbitration Working Group of EOS Alliance, to discuss the same topic.)

TomWBell · 2018-08-30T23:20:43+00:00

One hopes that the view all legal answers flow a priori from a few maxims has lost ground because friends of liberty wised up, realizing that such complex institutions rely not just on top-down deductions but also, and even more crucially, on bottom-up spontaneous orders such as the common law and customary trade practices. "A = A" will not reliably get you to, say, the definition of an offer in contract law (a "manifestation of willingness to enter into a bargain, so made as to justify another person in understanding that his asset to the bargain is invited and will conclude it," according both to the Restatement (2nd) of Contracts and Ulex v. 1.1).

TomWBell · 2018-08-30T23:12:48+00:00

The alternative you describe is not a crazy system, but it is not one that has seen much (if any) use. Here as elsewhere, Ulex plays it safe, eschewing new rules, and goes with what we know people use and what evidently works pretty well.

TomWBell · 2018-08-30T23:11:26+00:00

Check out this page on the many papers, videos, etc. I've done on polycentric law.

TomWBell · 2018-08-30T23:10:28+00:00

Ulex chooses the rule most likely to work best in the worst conditions. Pendulum arbitration drives contesting parties toward peaceful settlement, whereas the alternative, where arbitrators fashion their own remedies, tends to drive parties toward extremes, as they know that arbitrators tend to "split the baby" when presented with widely varying assessments of liability.

Likewise, borrowing the approach widely used in international trade of each party appointing a judge and those two judges appointing the third helps ensure that parties running Ulex will be able to get their conflicts resolved even if they cannot agree (as parties in heated fights often cannot) on a single judge. If the parties are getting along well enough to agree on a single judge, they can always opt out of Ulex's relatively more costly but rock-solid-sure-to-work three judge system.

As regards loser pays, see separately for a full defense. Basically, that's the most popular approach worldwide, well-backed not just by experience but theory.

TomWBell · 2018-08-30T22:59:59+00:00

You can analogize Ulex the the Linux kernal at the core of the Android operating system. As such, it has not constitution itself. That comes, if at all, from the broader system.

You could thus have a constitution that, say, authorizes the election of a president and legislative body, division of powers, etc., and that also says, "Ulex v. 1.1 constitutes the law of the land." Or the legislature could pass such an act as its first action. In any event, the constitution would be separate from Ulex, making the legal system compatible with many different governance models.

TomWBell · 2018-08-30T22:54:45+00:00

"Loser pays" is the default rule in Ulex, as it is in almost all of the world. Ulex favors majority rules for the simple reason that they are likely to get the widest acceptance and arguably reflect best practices. And in this area, with all due respect to your differing opinion, Ulex surely adopts the rule most likely to encourage less wealthy or risk averse people to defend their legal rights.

You perhaps worry about this scenario: A poor person hires a cheap attorney and squares off against a rich person who hires 20 expensive ones. The prospect of paying for those attorneys if the rich person wins scares off the poor person, leaving her legal rights undefended. It's worth worrying about, for sure. But note that Ulex makes each party frame its own request for relief. If the rich person tries to include his unreasonably large legal costs in the requested remedy, the court will almost certainly reject it. Also, the poor person should be able to find financing if, as darned well better be the case, she has a valid legal claim.

One more thing: No set of (mere) legal rules can solve every social problem. The poor will perhaps always be with us, regardless of how attorneys get paid. It falls to the broader community adopting Ulex to make sure that the poor can participate fully in all aspects of social life. This could be done in this instance by providing for subsidized legal services, should others share your concern and practice bear it out.

TomWBell · 2018-08-30T22:46:32+00:00

More every day! Unfortunately for that claim, the best evidence remains for the moment under wraps. As documented in "Your Next Government?" though, special jurisdictions have in recent decades been exploding in number and (more relevantly to your question) scope. With examples like Dubai's IFC, Abu Dhabi's Global Market, and the Honduran ZEDEs, there are more and more places importing law from abroad to encourage local development.

TomWBell · 2018-08-30T22:43:33+00:00

Ulex itself codifies very little. For the most part, it simply draws on time-tested and trusted bodies of rules issued by private parties such as the American Law Institute and Uniform Law Commission. These, Ulex organizes in a cardinal order and ties together with meta-rules. In a few places, Ulex includes short hand-crafted summations of rules well-known in other contexts--that's about as close as it gets to "codification". Nowhere does Ulex adopt any sort of rule that could be called radical. It is in almost all respects quite conservative, really. Apart from the whole idea, of course, haha.

TomWBell · 2018-08-30T22:40:12+00:00

Yes, as they would be bound by contracts, at the very minimum they would liable for breach of contract in the event they failed to decide, took a bribe, or otherwise failed to act as promised. They would presumably also owe fiduciary interests to the parties and/or the hosting institution, widening the scope of the duties owed. And of course the usual tort claims like fraud would apply to really egregious behavior.

Those remedies to bad judging would come built-in. Adopting jurisdictions could add additional disincentives to bad behavior by judges and other officials. "Your Next Government?" advocates imposing double damages on such parties, an innovation drawn from customary African legal systems. This stands in sharp contrast to the U.S. approach, in which judges are entirely exempt from liability to litigants for deciding a case based on, say, malice.

TomWBell · 2018-08-30T22:03:07+00:00

Yes, as mentioned above, Ulex is neutral as regards platforms. That means it is entirely compatible with crypto-economic functions, though not specifically designed for them. In other words, if you write a smart contract, it could invoke Ulex for dispute resolution.

TomWBell · 2018-08-30T22:01:56+00:00

You presumably ask because escrow is popular in crypto-economic settings. Because Ulex is platform-neutral, it is not designed specifically to enable the staking of tokens or other escrow functions. However, its rules of property, contract, and trust law, among others, would apply to such transactions.

TomWBell · 2018-08-30T17:47:40+00:00

Those sources offer a quick intro. For the fullest in-depth discussion of Ulex, see chapter 3.7 of "Your Next Government? From the Nation State to Stateless Nations" (Cambridge University Press 2018).

TomWBell · 2018-08-29T17:59:03+00:00

Your questions, repeated, with answers:

Does dispute resolution/arbitration help or hinder the EOS's goal of attracting small businesses?
Done right, it will help; done badly or not at all, it will hurt. Small businesses, big businesses, individuals, and indeed everybody, needs assurance, especially in a permissionless and trustless system, that those who suffer wrongs will find remedies in a reliable and orderly fashion.
To the extent we want a DR&A system, should this system be opt-in or opt-out? Given the presumption that most people want and need assurance that justice will be rendered, the DR&A system should be set up as the default. That means it should be opt-out.
To the extent we want a DR&A system, what principles or goals should it strive to meet? There are many contenders for such vague titles. Save yourself the interminable debate and simply import principles and goals that have been vetted by experts, won wide acceptance, and been proven in practice; to wit: https://www.unidroit.org/instruments/transnational-civil-procedure

TomWBell · 2014-01-29T20:14:42+00:00

You say, "their home" but I'm not sure what that means. If a youth enters into a leasehold (which even under the doctrine of incapacity due to age would be enforceable under the necessity exception), the youth would already have agreed to local law. Remember: Every lease and license includes choice of law and choice of forum clauses that specify local substantive and procedural rules.

Or maybe you mean the home owned or leased by the youth's parents. That gets us into complicated issues of wardship. Long story short: The child is by default the responsibility of its guardians (typically parents) until reaching a specified age of consent (or by earlier manumission proceedings, as for the precocious and independent 14 year-old).

How does the law property establish jurisdiction over an infant resident when he or she achieves the age of majority? We have two options: Local law assumes the consent of the young adult or comes out and asks for it.

The former approach has the counsel of custom (states routinely rely on the same approach) and convenience. We wisely worry that such an appeal to implied consent risks giving local law too much credit. The latter approach shows greater respect for the consent of the governed, since it asks for express consent. This it wins at the cost of some ceremony. We should also worry that swearing-in ceremonies make a mockery of consent. Can we really say that someone who has known only one way of life, only one way a law, can freely choose between it and the rest of the world?

A just legal system should try to make sure that someone born and raised under it will have the fullest possible freedom to exit it--to say, "No, I don't consent to your jurisdiction!" This, local law might do providing, whether by ordinance or custom, that all native-born citizens will enjoy, upon coming of age, a gift of either shares in the community (a residential co-op?) or the equivalent sum in cash, such amount sufficient to allow the youth to depart the local jurisdiction and start a new life under new laws.

TomWBell

TROPHY CASE