RE: US Congress Will Pass Blockchain Bills as Soon as Somebody Tells it What 'Blockchain' Means
Yeah, I was a stockbroker in the 80s, and Congress, then and now, was mostly defined by their inaction.
I spent most of 1988 In the European country of Luxembourg, as research assistant to a German banker and lawyer, who was doing his doctoral thesis on the lead bank's liability to disclose material information to partner banks in a consortium, given that banks are by default considered to be sophisticated investors, if they could have discovered the same information through their own due diligence.
He was comparing banking and securities law in civil law countries, such as Germany, France and Japan, versus common law countries, such as the U.K., the U.S., Canada and Australia.
So, since I was helping to distill the English part of the research, I wound up spending the better part of a year in Europe effectively studying common law and the U.S. legal system.
It was an eye-opening experience.
So yeah. I'm likely close to the average age of those in Congress, but I've actually embraced technology, am invested in cryptocurrencies, and have written Congress more than once to ask them politely to get their heads out of their collective assets, so to speak.
The introduction of the bill to remove cryptos from the control (and ongoing manipulation) of the securities market is a strong step in the right direction, but I'm not holding my breath.
On the other hand, the land of slush funds and hush money could benefit greatly from the secrecy of crypto, so it might actually happen sooner than we think.
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We shall see, won't we?
Indeed we shall.
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What were the biggest differences between common law and civil law countries?
Lots.
The primary difference is that in a common law country, such as ours, laws are promulgated based on prior case law, so the law evolves over time, and is ever changing. Precedence is everything.
In a civil law country, by contrast, the law is the law, and it rarely changes much at all, and then only in tiny increments. Any citizen can look up any crime or infraction in his or her country's civil code, and read in black and white precisely what the given penalty would be, if found guilty. No guesswork, straightforward, and little leeway for the judges.
Interestingly, a lot of the case law I wound up reading was from Louisiana, which is unique in that it follows both civil law, as in France, and common law, as in the rest of the United States.
Some pretty fascinating cases have come out of Louisiana.
We do still have civil proceedings, such as breech of contract, which follow the civil law procedural process.
As one example, whereas criminal proceedings follow pure common law, where there is a presumption of innocence until proven guilty, in a civil proceeding, there is no such presumption, and both parties must offer proof.
So which is better? Both. And neither.
As an American, I favor the presumption of innocence, and the ability of our courts to take into consideration changing times and circumstances.
At the same time, there are many times where our courts have outright failed to serve justice, not that civil law courts are immune to that either. Overall it's probably a wash, and Louisiana may have the right idea, though frequently with the wrong execution.
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