Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Economic Development and Business Culture (ICEDBC 2025)

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Smart Contracts and Legal Enforceability: Bridging the Gap Between Code and Law

Authors
Ting Ting Mimi Jiang1, *
1College of Business, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
*Corresponding author. Email: tingjiang497@gmail.com
Corresponding Author
Ting Ting Mimi Jiang
Available Online 26 February 2026.
DOI
10.2991/978-94-6239-604-3_4How to use a DOI?
Keywords
Smart contract; Blockchain; Legal enforceability
Abstract

As smart contracts becomes increasingly popular, people start to be aware of how it can integrate with the traditional law systems. This paper examines the enforceability of smart contracts and the consistent gap between law and coding. Firstly, it identifies four core conflicts that codes and legitimacy have, including their mutability and flexibility natures, transparency compare to privacy, and usefulness in courts. Methodologically, it synthesises from three aspects: technical, economic and legal analysis to propose a layered framework for attempts to reduce the “gap”. Technically, it suggests zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs), redactable blockchain innovation, formal verifications and fuzzing when accessing the smart contracts, and on-chain dispute resolution. These may mitigate privacy, immutability and security issues. From the legal perspective, it advocates hybrid-tech frameworks like hybrid smart legal contracts, binding Terms of Use (TOU) as procedural layers, Oracle utilisation, and digital signatures and statutory recognition of smart contracts explicitly. Finally, this essay proposes identity and reputation systems using self-sovereign identity (SSI) frameworks to align privacy with accountability. All the solutions are explained and provided with examples in the essay. The findings support a co-evoluntionary model where code and law are paralleled and used co-dependently, enabling an efficient development of the society.

Copyright
© 2026 The Author(s)
Open Access
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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Volume Title
Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Economic Development and Business Culture (ICEDBC 2025)
Series
Advances in Economics, Business and Management Research
Publication Date
26 February 2026
ISBN
978-94-6239-604-3
ISSN
2352-5428
DOI
10.2991/978-94-6239-604-3_4How to use a DOI?
Copyright
© 2026 The Author(s)
Open Access
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Cite this article

risenwbib
TY  - CONF
AU  - Ting Ting Mimi Jiang
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/02/26
TI  - Smart Contracts and Legal Enforceability: Bridging the Gap Between Code and Law
BT  - Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Economic Development and Business Culture (ICEDBC 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 24
EP  - 33
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-604-3_4
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-604-3_4
ID  - Jiang2026
ER  -