Decentralized justice

True justice. Justice between individuals.

It is important to specify that this feed is written in the form of Brainstorm, goes beyond what it appears to be, because, due to the complexity of the subject, it is necessary to go much deeper, without a doubt, it is a topic that deserves more than one thesis.

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La decentralized justice consists of access to and imparting of justice, nothing more and nothing less, than by individuals themselves. The justification is found in the fact that an opportunity to access justice will be given to matters that, normally, would not end up in the hands of the judiciary, since it would be very costly and very time-consuming.

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From a teleological vision of justice, decentralized justice finds its foundation as a collective attribution of the administration of justice, finding support from an epistemological and moral legal perspective.

Let's take an example, a freelancer or a marketing agency, regardless, will carry out a brand development and a market study with a cost of approximately $90,000 pesos; the client, at the time of the final payment (suppose that about $45,000 pesos are outstanding) tells the agency that he will not make the payment because he believes that the contract was not fulfilled, obviously the agency will be reluctant to say that if he complied, however, it will simply be the agency's word against that of the client.

In this case, we have two options, to go to a court competent in the matter and request compliance with the contract, a matter that will take at least a year and for which you will also have to hire a lawyer, who of course, if you accept the matter, I suppose, would charge approximately 30% of the amount of the business. In conclusion, there is no cost-benefit for the plaintiff, for reasons of practicality, it would probably be best if it were with another agency.

What would happen to applied decentralized justice?

What will happen will be that they will obtain access to justice without the need for lawyers, and without the need to wait at least a year to obtain justice. (Remember: Justice Delayed, It Is Not Justice).

In the event of a dispute, the parties will submit to a digital Court, to a dispute resolution system through arbitration, with an established procedure, with the guarantee of payment by means of a Escrow digital, a carefully selected jury (and that will not be affected by its independence, but will really be a blind justice) and with a defined resolution time.

Taking into account the model proposed by Kleros (I invite you to learn about the project at www.kleros.io), all of the above can be a reality thanks to blockchain and game theory.

A justice Peer to Peer (between individuals), a globalized community beyond the actor and the defendant, beyond territorial competence, all based on cryptoeconomics.

But how does it work? What is a smart contract and what does it do? How does arbitration become a “binding” option? How is the jury chosen? How do you encourage the jury to vote in a consistent manner? How is it that a territorial competence does not apply? To understand a little more about how Kleros works, I share the following video:

Having understood the above, the main advantage of decentralized justice is, as mentioned by Kleros in his white paper, which sums it up in a splendid way:

Just as Bitcoin brought “the bank for the unbanked”, Kleros (- and, in general, any model of decentralized justice) has the potential to bring “justice for those who don't have justice”.

Nowadays, Ebay, Alibaba And Amazon they have their conflict resolution system. Ebay resolves around 60 million disputes a year; Alibaba has approximately 2 million jurors in its private court.

Simply by looking at the number of e-commerce disputes that are resolved, we can realize the magnitude and impact of peer to peer justice.

In most cases, it would have been impossible to go to the supplier's country to fight you. However, thanks to this mechanism, justice is already a reality regardless of the “amount of the business”.

And it doesn't just apply to e-commerce, it can be applied to any situation you can imagine, however, as long as it's between individuals. It can be to defend intellectual property rights, insurance, service provision, a commercial commission, perhaps an employment contract, etc.

Decentralized justice breaks with all the paradigms we have today about the delivery of justice. It delegates a State power to the same individuals. I do not doubt that many of the specialists in law and the administration of justice will be reluctant to accept this purest form of doing so, however, we must not forget that the practice of law must be adapted to society and not society to the law.

Although it is a fairly new topic, there is no doubt that it will be worth investigating and in the future (hopefully the near future) decentralized justice is beginning to “normalize”.

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We would love to hear your point of view! Do you believe that decentralized justice can become a reality? Is society ready for peer justice? Will it replace the State with a “monopoly” on the administration of justice? What other Digital Courts are you aware of?

This feed was inspired by the Kleros white paper: https://kleros.io/static/whitepaper_es-fcff5e8e17ccc03edb35aee9e95a484c.pdf