Code is Not Law: Code Can be a Language Used to Create Smart Contracts

Richard Levin, Peter Waltz and Robert Wenner

“Code is Law”.¹¹Lessig (1999); see also Lessig (2000; 2015). While leading academics and other fans of technology believe in this concept, other members of the financial technology (fintech) community, academia and the legal community believe code is not law.²²Kolber (2016); see also Abegg (2016).

Law can be defined as:

the principles and regulations established in a community by some authority and applicable to its people, whether in the form of legislation or of custom and policies recognised and enforced by judicial decision; or any written or positive rule or collection of rules prescribed under the authority of the state or nation, as by the people in its constitution; or any controlling influence of such rules, the condition of society brought about by their observance.³³For instance, dictionary.com.

Code is a form of language. Language can be defined as

a body of words and the systems for their use common to a people who are of the same community or nation, the same geographical area, or the same cultural tradition; communication by voice in the distinctively human manner, using arbitrary sounds in conventional ways with conventional meanings; speech; the system