The building of the blockchain is predicted to harken the end of the contemporary sovereign order. Some go further to claim that as a powerful decentering technology, blockchain contests the continued functioning of world capitalism. Are such claims merited? In this paper we consider sovereignty and blockchain technology theoretically, posing possible futures for sovereignty in a blockchain world. These possibilities include various forms of individual, popular, technological, corporate, and techno-totalitarian state sovereignty. We identify seven structural tendencies of blockchain technology and (...) give examples as to how these have manifested in the construction of new forms of sovereignty. We conclude that the future of sovereignty in a blockchain world will be articulated in the conjuncture of social struggle and technological agency and we call for a stronger alliance between technologists and democrats. (shrink)

A new legal field is emerging around blockchain platforms and automated transactions. Understanding the relationships between law, legal enforcement, and these technological systems has become critical for scaling blockchain applications. Because ‘smart contracts’ do not themselves constitute agreements, the first necessary ‘legal’ development for transacting with these technologies involves linking computational transactions to natural language contracts. Various groups have accordingly begun building libraries of machine readable transaction modules that correspond to natural language contracting elements. In doing so, they are creating (...) the building blocks for ever more complex transactions that will ultimately define the entire envelope of computational legal conduct in these environments, and likely standardise the field. However, also critical to emerging blockchain ‘legalities’, is the capacity for dispute resolution and legal enforcement. Beyond the performance of parties, or the quality of goods and services transacted, new mechanisms are also needed to address the performance of the computational transaction systems themselves. Such mechanisms are necessary to address the reality that smart contracts cannot be forced to perform actions beyond the parameters of their coding, even by a judicial order. Legal tools, both technological and institutional, are thus being developed to ‘soften’ the effects of self-executing transactions. In this article we treat these developments as law-making practices that are constitutive of an emerging legal field. Legal engineering exercises of this kind are not novel, and by drawing on historic examples from the common law and international arbitration, we gain insights into the competitive dynamics likely to be shaping legal engagements on the blockchain. (shrink)

In this groundbreaking work, French legal scholar Alain Supiot examines the relationship of society to legal discourse. He argues that the law is how justice is implmented in secular society, but it is not simply a technique to be manipulated at will: it is also an expression of the core beliefs of the West. We must recognize its universalizing, dogmatic nature and become receptive to other interpretations from non-Western cultures to help us avoid the clash of civilizations. In Homo Juridicus, (...) Supiot deconstructs the illusion of a world that has become flat and undifferentiated, regulated only by supposed "laws" of science and the economy, and peopled by contract-makers driven only by the calculation of their individual interests. Such a liberal perspective is nothing but the flipside of the notion of the withering away of law and the state, promoted this time not under the banner of the struggle between classes, but rather in the name of the free competition between sovereign individuals. Supiot's exploration of the development of the legal subject-the individual as formed through a dense web of contracts and laws-is set to become a classic work of social theory. (shrink)

L'image, c'est le dogme. Il s'agit de redéfinir le lien social, en tenant compte de ce que la pensée occidentale, pour ses raisons historiques propres, soustrait encore au questionnement : le mécanisme de l'institution des images, point de gravitation de tout système normatif. Parce qu'une partie indéfiniment tragique se joue pour l'homme d'aujourd'hui - l'énigme de Narcisse - on ne peut aborder ces problèmes très difficiles sous la férule du scientisme. Nous avons à renouer avec l'insu ; faire place à (...) la dimension fantastique, à l'ordre poétique du discours des images, à la fable du divin messager. Que signifie le montage de l'Imago Dei? A notre époque, comme au temps de la ferveur théologienne, nos sociétés doivent affronter l'exigence universelle : fabriquer l'homme pour qu'il ressemble à l'homme, c'est-à-dire mettre en scène le Miroir absolu et fonder le lien d'image. La logique impose sa loi. Manœuvrer la problématique spéculaire, c'est exercer le pouvoir absolu : disposer de l'arme symbolique. En ce qu'elles touchent à la passion de l'image, les instances qui composent le Miroir dans la culture - Etats, médias ultramodernes, sciences, juridictions psy, etc. - touchent à l'aliénation constitutive du sujet, elles exercent la force pure. Savoir cela porte à conséquence. Ces Leçons III dessinent définitivement un champ. Après l'anthropologie physique, puis sociale, est venu le temps, pour la réflexion contemporaine, de l'anthropologie dogmatique. (shrink)