The courses are launched with the backing of Ripple’s Blockchain Research Initiative (UBRI), a course seeking to partner with universities to study budding trends and innovations in distributed ledger technology, digital payments and cryptocurrencies.
Similar to several Australian universities, ANU already provides undergraduate programs that teach the link between blockchain and law.
The University of Melbourne and The University of Southern Queensland offer programs closely connected with DLT and blockchain, while other universities have included the subject as part of other programs.
Scott Chamberlain, business fellow at the ANU School of Law, will create and administer the university’s blockchain divisions.
The programs will study whether blockchain and smart contracts can be utilized to mechanize and decentralize legal procedures and disagreement solutions.
Chamberlain issued an optimistic statement about the capability of blockchain. “Imagine an eBay-like platform that can resolve consumer law disputes without engaging the court system,” he said.
Chamberlain stated that several easy legal procedures, including identity confirmation and relationship of appropriate parties, and the laws overseeing their communications could adopt blockchain.
“[A legal dispute] deals with who are the legal identities that the law recognizes? What are the legal things that the law recognizes existing? What’s the relationship between people and things? And there’s a dispute resolution at the heart of it. When you look at the blockchain smart contract space, there’s projects doing all of those things.”
Chamberlain runs the ‘Lex Auomagica’ platform at ANU, which is an effort to figure out some of the problems without involving intermediates and custodians of the legal sector.
In February last year, Ripple offered Lex Automatica with $1 million in financing. Legal researchers and professionals are paying more interest about the capabilities of blockchain to offer decentralized solutions to various issues.
Endeavors, which are already in place include Jur, Aragon Court and Kleros.