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Programming Legal Contracts

– A Beginners Guide to  Stipula –

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The Logic of Software. A Tasting Menu of Formal Methods

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 13360))

Abstract

We discuss the design principles of Stipula, a domain specific language that can assists lawyers in programming legal contracts through specific software patterns. The language is based on a small set of primitives, that precisely correspond to the distinctive elements of legal contracts, and that are amenable to be prototyped on both centralized or distributed systems. We also outline two formal techniques to reason about Stipula contracts: a type inference system that allows to derive types for fields, assets and contract’s functions, and an analyzer of liquidity that pinpoints those contracts that do not freeze any asset forever.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For simplicity, this code requires Better1 to place its bet before Better2. It is easy to extend the code to let the two bets be placed in any order.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Padova, Padua, Italy

    Silvia Crafa

  2. University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Cosimo Laneve

Authors
  1. Silvia Crafa
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  2. Cosimo Laneve
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Cosimo Laneve .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Wolfgang Ahrendt

  2. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Bernhard Beckert

  3. TU Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Richard Bubel

  4. University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Einar Broch Johnsen

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Crafa, S., Laneve, C. (2022). Programming Legal Contracts. In: Ahrendt, W., Beckert, B., Bubel, R., Johnsen, E.B. (eds) The Logic of Software. A Tasting Menu of Formal Methods. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13360. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08166-8_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08166-8_7

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-08165-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-08166-8

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