Corrigendum: Decentralized justice: state of the art, recurring criticisms and next-generation research topics

A Corrigendum on
Decentralized justice: state of the art, recurring criticisms and next-generation research topics

by Ast F, George W, Kamalova J, Sharma A and Aouidef Y (2023). Front. Blockchain 6:1204090. doi: 10.3389/fbloc.2023.1204090

In the published article, Alencar and Lesaege, 2020 was not cited in the article. The reference has now been added to the list of references and the citation has been inserted in 6. Moral Challenges, 6.1 A hyper financialization of dispute resolution?, Paragraph 9. The corrected paragraph appears below:

“Moreover, because jurors have a vested interest in the outcome of the dispute, they are also able to appeal a verdict if they find themselves in the minority (Alencar and Lesaege, 2020). In this way, jurors can be considered another category of the disputing parties themselves. This changed reality of the party-juror and juror-juror relationship throws up several interesting conundrums that may require further research from a moral philosophy and sociological perspective.”

In the published article, Dimov, 2017 was not cited in the article. The reference has now been added to the list of references and the citation has been inserted in 2. What is decentralized justice, 2.3 Generating perceptions of fairness, Paragraph 1. The corrected paragraph appears below:

“In order to be considered legitimate, any court system must produce decisions that can reasonably be described as “fair” by disputants and outside observers. Determining what is “fair” is a subjective, controversial philosophical endeavor, and it is not the purpose of this paper to delve into such debates (Fennell and McAdams, 2014), but it must be noted that Ast and Deffains state that decentralized justice systems such as Kleros can be deemed to be “fair” in accordance with some formal models of defining fairness, such as Daniel Dimov’s model of procedural fairness (Dimov, 2017).”

In the published article, Dzur, 2010 was not cited in the article. The reference has now been added to the list of references and the citation has now been inserted in 6. Moral Challenges, 6.1 A hyper financialization of dispute resolution?, Paragraph 11. The corrected paragraph appears below:

“Moreover, some thinkers have mentioned that the role of jury duty is not only to deliver justice, but also to deliver broader benefits to society, such as educating citizens on current affairs, instilling good habits in them, and a means of empowering citizens to exercise sovereignty in a democracy (Papke, 2021; Dzur, 2010). There are some commentators that are skeptical about decentralized justice systems because they encourage “speculative profit-seeking” from jurors in “another form of precarious platform work that is endemic to so-called ‘sharing economies’” and “ignores the important role courts have not only in dispute resolution, but also in creating and regulating societal and economic norms.” (Dylag and Smith, 2021) It would be interesting to have further research that thoroughly investigates what social externalities decentralized arbitration mechanisms may be associated with.”

In the published article, Fully Informed Jury Association, 2022 was not cited in the article. The reference has now been added to the list of references and the citation has been inserted in 6. Moral Challenges, 6.1 A hyper financialization of dispute resolution?, Paragraph 4. The corrected paragraph appears below:

“Because jurors are deemed to be performing a social duty, they are entitled to certain protections in order to perform their tasks fearlessly. Chiefly, jurors are encouraged to vote their conscience and cannot be penalized for any decisions they make (Fully Informed Jury Association, 2022). Even the small number of crowdsourced online platforms that exist in the e-commerce space do not provide much in the way of financial incentives to jurors, who are largely unpaid volunteers (Kwok et al., 2021).”

In the published article, Hartman, 2009 was not cited in the article. The reference has now been added to the list of references and the citation has been inserted in 6. Moral Challenges, 6.2 Decentralized justice and international business ethics, Paragraph 2. The corrected paragraph appears below:

“Different frameworks have been proposed to answer this question, coming from normative perspectives such as utilitarianism (Elfstrom, 1991), Kantian ethics (Bowie, 2017) and Aristotelian virtue ethics (Solomon, 1992). Notably, a contractarian approach known as Integrative Social Contracts Theory (Donaldson and Dunfee, 1994) suggests a normative heuristic in order to conduct the norm discovery process. Different proposals were conducted for discovering what this theory calls hypernorms (valid universally across cultures) and authentic norms (valid within the boundaries of specific communities) (Hartman et al., 2003; Hartman, 2009; Ast, 2017b). Decentralized justice systems can be utilized as another option under the norm-discovery toolkit, especially in the search for authentic norms. Communities composed of individuals with overlapping values, interests or other traits can leverage focal points to distinguish acceptable conduct from taboos using decentralized justice systems relying on the edicts of social hierarchies. From a Hayekian perspective, these communities of practice (Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner, 2015) may benefit from the inclusion of an economically incentivized way of discovering valid norms. Under this perspective, it is impossible to ascertain what the ethical norms in a community would be ahead of time, and rules of a community instead present themselves as an adaptation of society to its environment and of the general characteristics of its members, constantly evolving to meet the needs of its individual members (Stringham, 2015).”

In the published article, Juror 0xe86e3, 2021 was not cited in the article. The reference has now been added to the list of references and the citation has been inserted in 5. Legal challenges, 5.3 Decentralized justice in the context of public policy issues, Paragraph 7. The corrected paragraph appears below:

“As decentralized justice systems mature in sophistication and adoption, we may see the emergence of norms and practices unique to said mechanisms. Even in its nascency, decentralized justice is witnessing the same jurisprudential deliberation that influenced judicial systems over centuries. For instance, cases on the Kleros courts have witnessed heated debates on the value of precedents, the purposes of preambles, and deciding between the letter and spirit of a norm (Juror 0xe86e3, 2021). In fact, some commentators have gone as far as to claim that decentralized justice systems will find themselves completely divorced from traditional legal norms, instead developing a lex cryptographia that will obviate the need to pay any deference to rules and practices in traditional legal systems (Chevalier, 2021). An interesting field of research would be to investigate to what extent such predictions of a lex cryptographia may hold valid in the present context.”

In the published article, United States Courts, 2022 was not cited in the article. The reference has now been added to the list of references and the citation has been inserted in 6. Moral Challenges, 6.1 A hyper financialization of dispute resolution?, Paragraph 3. The corrected paragraph appears below:

“Even within the blockchain ecosystem, criticisms of the “homo economicus” model may be especially applicable to decentralized justice systems, for the most crucial feature that sets them apart from crowdsourced online platforms is the introduction of direct cryptoeconomic incentives to the performance of jurors. Traditionally, jurors are often expected to serve pursuant to their duty to society, and in some jurisdictions avoiding jury duty may attract a penalty ranging from a fine to imprisonment (Ninth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida, 2021). Jurors are otherwise typically paid only modest amounts of money to offset some of their inconvenience (United States Courts, 2022).”

In the published article, the reference for Ast and Deffains, 2021 was incorrectly written as Ast, F. (2021c). When online dispute resolution meets blockchain: The Birth of decentralized justice. Stanford Journal of Blockchain Law and Policy. Available at: https://stanford-jblp.pubpub.org/pub/birth-of-decentralized-justice#nfclt0ekvs9. It should be Ast, F. and Deffains, B. (2021). When online dispute resolution meets blockchain: The Birth of decentralized justice. Stanford Journal of Blockchain Law and Policy. Available at: https://stanford-jblp.pubpub.org/pub/birth-of-decentralized-justice#nfclt0ekvs9.

In the published article, the name of one of the authors was incorrectly spelled in the reference for James, 2020a as Stuart, J. It should be James, S.

In the published article, due to a formatting error during the typesetting process, the citations appeared in the text in alphabetical order by author rather than in the order in which they should have appeared.

The authors apologize for these errors and state that this does not change the scientific conclusions of the article in any way. The original article has been updated.

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