Traditional or Agile Contracting for Software Development

As the use of software is present in so many activities today, it is important for business in particular to be aware of challenges that may seem different today than before the prevalence of software in our lives. Agile project management is one example: this more recent and nimble approach to software development presents its own challenges. Fortunately, the guiding legal principles related to traditional contract formation and execution are based in principles of fairness and equity, making the customization of legal principles to Agile contracting a reasonable endeavor. This chapter presents basic contract law and such law as it more specifically relates to contracts dealing with Agile software development.

Regulation of the Smart Contract in (Romanian) Civil Law

The research aims to organize, examine, and analyze the provisions on smart contracts available in Romanian civil law. “Smart contracts” are not smart, and are not necessarily contracts, although they can be. As self-executing computer programs, smart contracts are operational on the blockchain and unlike traditional legal contracts, once the agreement has been concluded and the smart contract is set in motion, no party can intervene and it will be executed without interruption, modification, or breach. The crucial question in the final contract law topic is what happens when the smart contract's outcomes deviate from those required by law. To answer this issue, we must first understand that whether a smart contract becomes legally enforceable is determined by several circumstances, together with the unique use case, the type of smart contract employed, and the existing legislation. The paper addresses the subject of determining and regulating smart contracts under Romanian current laws. Particular emphasis is placed on two ambiguous definitions of smart contracts: as computer code and as a civil-law contract. The authors conclude that the concept of smart contracts requires more legal regulation, particularly in terms of managing their meaning and comprehension.

THE PRINCIPLES OF CIVIL LIABILITY (continuation)

The French law of obligations has been undergoing significant changes in the recent years. The French contract law reform came to the end in 2018. The next set of the changes relates to the civil liability issues. A translation of a book written by one of the key French authors in this field, which translation is proposed to divide into several parts and to so make it available for the Russian legal professional community, helps to better explore the material and to clearer understand the main principles which the French approach on the fundamental problems of the civil law liability is based on.

Behavioral Contract Law

This article explores some behavioral findings that are relevant to three areas of contract: formation, performance, and remedies. I compare the rational choice theory analysis of various aspects of contract law with how behavioral findings lead to a change in our understanding of that area of law. A penultimate section considers several criticisms of behavioral economics. A concluding section calls for altering some settled understandings of contract law to accommodate behavioral results and for further research about some still uncertain aspects of contracting.