Enforcing Constitutional Rights Through Computer Code

Authors

Steve YoungFollow

Abstract

Lawmaking and enforcement has advanced since Hammurabi first wrote out his legal code thousands of years ago. Today, the American legal system relies on legislatively-enacted federal, state, county, and municipal legal codes, agency-created regulations, the judge-made common law, and various law enforcement entities. This can be a confusing and complex system of rules and their explanations with varying degrees of enforcement. Blockchain technology is an automatic and efficient alternative to written codes that must be humanly-enforced. There has been limited scholarly interest in the implications of a legal application of blockchain technology to a political system but there have been few articles written that combine the implementation of blockchain to the political system in conjunction with smart contacts.

While still theoretical, this note highlights the various ways in which already-existing blockchain technology can be applied to government actions through an overarching Social Smart Contract or Smart Constitution allowing for greater transparency and automatic self-enforcement of the law.

Recommended Citation

Steve Young, Enforcing Constitutional Rights Through Computer Code, 26 Cath. U. J. L. & Tech 52 (2017).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.edu/jlt/vol26/iss1/5