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Work at the intersection of blockchain technology and law suffers from a distinct linguistic disadvantage. As a highly interdisciplinary area of inquiry, legal researchers, lawmakers, researchers in the technical sciences, and the public all talk past each other, using the same words, but as different terms of art. Evidence of these language wars largely derives from anecdote. To better assess the nature and scope of the problem, this Article uses corpus linguistics to reveal the inherent value conflicts embedded in definitional differences and debates related to developing regulation in one specific area of the blockchain technology ecosystem: cryptocurrency. Using cryptocurrency as a case study reveals the delicate balance necessary to develop law in even the best popularly understood area of blockchain technology. In doing so, the Article demonstrates that corpus linguistics offers a tool for identifying specific linguistic ambiguities before they are embedded in law, ultimately enhancing the clarity, predictability, and coherency of the regulatory regimes to which cryptocurrency is subject., TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1196 I. Interdisciplinary Language and Conflicting Claims of Legal Meaning 1201 A. Law's Troubled History with Interdisciplinarity 1203 B. A New Role for Corpus Linguistics in [...]

Several states have recently changed their business organization law to accommodate autonomous businesses--businesses operated entirely through computer code. A variety of international civil society groups are also actively developing new frameworks-- and a model law--for enabling decentralized, autonomous businesses to achieve a corporate or corporate-like status that bestows legal personhood. Meanwhile, various jurisdictions, including the European Union, have considered whether and to what extent artificial intelligence (AI) more broadly should be endowed with personhood to respond to AI's increasing presence in society. Despite the fairly obvious overlap between the two sets of inquiries, the legal and policy discussions between the two only rarely overlap. As a result of this failure to communicate, both areas of personhood theory fail to account for the important role that socio-technical and socio-legal context plays in law and policy development. This Article fills the gap by investigating the limits of artificial rights at the intersection of corporations and artificial intelligence. Specifically, this Article argues that building a comprehensive legal approach to artificial rights--rights enjoyed by artificial people, whether corporate entity, machine, or otherwise--requires approaching the issue through a systems lens to ensure that the legal system adequately considers the varied socio-technical contexts in which artificial people exist. To make these claims, this Article begins by establishing a terminology baseline, and emphasizing the importance of viewing AI as part of a socio-technical system. Part I then concludes by reviewing the existing ecosystem of autonomous corporations. Parts II and III then examine the existing debates around artificially intelligent persons and corporate personhood, arguing that the socio-legal needs driving artificial personhood debates in both contexts include: protecting the rights of natural people, upholding social values, and creating a fiction for legal convenience. Parts II and III also explore the extent to which the theories from either set of literature fits the reality of autonomous businesses, illuminating gaps and using them to demonstrate that the law must consider the socio-technical context of AI systems and the socio-legal complexity of corporations to decide how autonomous businesses will interact with the world. Ultimately, the Article identifies and leverages links between both areas of legal personhood to demonstrate the Article's core claim: developing law for artificial systems in any context should use the systems nature of the technical artifact to tie its legal treatment directly to the system's socio-technical reality., INTRODUCTION I. ARTIFICIAL PERSONHOOD AND THE IMPORTANCE OF SOCIO-TECHNICAL CONTEXT A. Preliminary Matters: Defining Key Terms and Level-Setting on Key Paradigms B. The ABR Taxonomy Emphasizes the Importance of Context [...]

Nation states often create legislative schemes regulating services industries' in order to protect fundamental rights such as human life, economic security, or human security. World Trade Organization members are constrained in their creation of such regulatory schemes' by their obligations under the General Agreement on Trade in Services ('GATS'). WTO members' raised concerns' about such constraints even before the creation of GATS. As a result, GATS contains clauses specifically designed to allow members enough regulatory latitude to protect important domestic social interests, such as fundamental rights, while simultaneously liberalising trade in services'. WTO jurisprudence interpreting these clauses, however, has called the robustness of this reserved power into question. Using the European Union's attempt to protect the fundamental right to privacy through a WTO-compliant privacy directive as a case study, this article highlights important aspects of international trade law that policymakers should take into consideration when deciding how to protect fundamental rights through domestic regulation of trade in services., CONTENTS I Introduction II GATS and the Privacy Directive: Background and Threshold Issues A The EU Privacy Directive B Is the Privacy Directive a Measure Covered by GATS? C GATS [...]

The article focuses on the decentralized ledger technology ecosystem such as bitcoin payments. It mentions that the endogenous theory of decentralized ledger technology regulation from concepts found in economic regulation, international development, comparative law, and financial regulation. It also mentions that ex ante and ex post regulatory dichotomy by building compliance into the protocol.