The Metaverse Republic

Why did we choose to make the Metaverse Republic a common law system?

There are two kinds of legal systems in the world: common law systems, and civil law systems. In common law systems (which originated in the UK; common law countries include the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and many other parts of the world that were once British colonies), the law is based on the decisions of courts in previous cases(”precedent”): the courts are bound to decide subsequent cases consistently with the way in which previous cases were decided. In all common law systems, that common law precedent is subject to legislation, which, when passed, over-rides previous decisions of the court on the point, but only applies from the time that it was passed, not retrospectively. Where no previous decisions of the courts or legislation fully answers any question of law with which the court is posed, it must come up with a fresh principle, based on what fits in best with existing legislation and common law precedent. That then becomes a precedent for future cases.

In civil law systems (which originated from Roman Law, including most of continental Europe and the African and Asian countries colonised by European countries other than the UK), the courts do not have to decide cases consistently with previous decisions of the courts. Instead, the courts base their decisions on large “codes of law”, generalised rules about the subject-matter in question (contract, tort, restitution, property, etc.), passed by the legislation setting out the general principles on which courts make decisions, and sometimes fairly detailed rules. The courts make decisions by applying those generalised principles, and, where they exist, the detailed rules to the individual cases.

The Metaverse Republic will use the common law model. There are several advantages to doing so, the chief of which is that there is no need to write immense and fully comprehensive codes of substantive law before we even start to work. Given the amount of time that it is (necessarily) taking to formulate just the constitutional structure of the law, it would take many, many years before we were able to produce from scratch comprehensive codes of substantive law fit for application by a civil legal system. Secondly, common law systems can be more flexible in that common law precedent can adapt to situations that might not easily be foreseen when drafting entire codes; any subsequent legislation on the point can then address the issue specifically. Thirdly, common law systems are, ultimately, more predictable: because every decision on a new point creates binding precedent, far more detailed rules emerge, meaning that it is easier to predict what a court will do when faced with a difficult point. In a civil law system, there is no guarantee that a court’s decisions will be consistent with one another. Also, generally, in common law systems, the statutes are more detailed, so that the principles are built up from the details, rather than the details being inferred (by the courts) from the principles. That means that the legislature’s, rather than the judiciary’s, view of what details are entailed by the principles prevails, and is knowable in advance by all concerned. Finally, common law systems are familiar to a majority of users of SecondLife, since common law systems prevail in the US and the UK (as well as a number of other countries, as above), where a large proportion of SecondLife residents reside.