The judicial system is an integral part of modern society.

Every country has its set of laws that must be followed; transgressors are prosecuted. But the legal system does a lot more than just handle criminal charges. In fact, a large portion of legal activity revolves around handling civil conflicts. Criminal transgressions involve an infraction agaisnt the law, whereas civil transgressions involve disputes between parties, that can be either individuals or organizations.

There are two ways of handling legal issues. Litigation is when a legal case is handled through a court, while arbitration is a legal dispute resolution that is handled outside the court.

Arbitration is a common means to resolve contract disputes, disagreements, or breaches. The court certainly can handle such conflicts but it's more expensive and time-consuming to do so; thus, both individuals and organizations opt to arbitrate, either directly or through lawyers, to dodge court fees. While arbitration may be faster than litigation, it can still be costly if done through lawyers. All in all, handling disagreements can be expensive.

Blockchain Cuts the Cost

A new blockchain project, Jur, cuts the cost of legal settlements by providing a platform for consensus-based resolutions.

The core aspect of Jur is to provide smart contracts that sustain the terms and funds involved in any deal. Once the terms decided by both parties are met, the funds are released as per the pre-set conditions that were dictated at the time of contract strike.

However, most agreements are complex and can involve multiple unexpected off-chain events to occur that the involves parties could not initially predict.

Thus, while the code may be great at providing a trustless means to handle the funds, it can not handle a dispute in case new events or deceptive measures by one party at the time of contract strike force one or more parties to annul or modify an agreement.

Typically, a scenario like this would lead to either litigation or arbitration through attorneys, but Jur offers a counter.

In order for a blockchain ecosystem to handle agreements, it must be able to handle unexpected disputes.

Jur incorporates oracles that serve as a jury deciding between who is right or wrong in a dispute. In a case where a dispute is brought up over a contract, the involved parties can bring the case to Jur's oracles, powered through a network of legal experts. The oracles then view the case and the evidence each party can provide.

The oracles must stake JUR tokens and thus must make the right decision. Once the decisions from the oracles are tallied, the funds held in the smart contract are passed to the winning party; the winning side is the one that the majority of the oracles voted for. Additionally, the staked tokens of the losing oracle(s) are handed to the winning oracles. Thus, Jur integrates consensus into arbitration and this greatly cuts down the cost of dispute resolution while also cutting down on the time required.

Jur aims to resolve each case within 24 hours. As the initial terms of the smart contract are immutable, the oracles will not have to spend time and resources to finding the true initial terms; the smart contract will contain them. The decision will be easy to make as the terms of the agreement and all new evidence or information that may cause the contract to be held or waived would be immediately presented to be assessed. Such a system makes it possible to directly jump to a judgment, and this is the factor behind Jur's ability to cut costs and offer dispute resolution in a swift manner.