The Law Commission has concluded that the existing law of England and Wales can accommodate smart contracts and there is no need for legislative reform. It has published advice to the U.K. Government and a separate summary of its conclusions on the subject. The Law Commission commenced its investigation into the ability of English law to accommodate both smart contracts and digital assets in September 2020. It has published a separate interim update on the digital assets project, which sets out the status and timing of the digital assets project. It anticipates publishing its digital assets consultation paper in mid-2022 as opposed to end-2021, as originally proposed.
Under a smart legal contract, some or all of the contractual obligations are performed automatically by a computer program and the contract is legally enforceable. The Law Commission's investigations focussed on contracts in which contractual obligations were defined either in a combination of natural language and computer code, or entirely in code. It drew conclusions in the following contractual areas:
The Law Commission has also included a non-exhaustive list of issues that parties may wish to provide for in their smart contract.
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