The Club des juristes is pleased to share the English version of the report of the Online Arbitration commission, chaired by Thomas Clay, Professor at the Faculty of Law at the Sorbonne (Paris-I University).

Between the normative « code » and the digital « code », it isn’t just a question of homonymy. In both cases, the aim is to translate a given instruction into a specific language, whether for an individual or for a machine. Encoding, common to both operations, is ultimately only a form of transliteration, whether classical or modern. In these days of multiplying codes, where we will soon need a code for the codes or a code to access the codes, programmers appear to be the new holders of knowledge capital, as was previously the case of the codes that had as their primary function to compile rules. As such, legal writing and digital writing adhere to similar concepts. For that matter, mathematics aren’t far removed. There is therefore no ontological contradiction between the law and digital technology. On the contrary.

m m mBut rather than keeping to the classical model of justice, incarnated by judicial institutions, this study proposes to concentrate on the other form of justice, namely arbitration. This choice, made by the people in charge of the Club des juristes, allows firstly some deviation from the beaten path and secondly consideration of a more flexible method for resolving disputes. Given its often international dimension, it could in principle, given the means sometimes made available to it and its adaptability, offer fertile ground for experimenting with digital technology in connection with justice.