Decentralised Justice at Oxford: Law in the Digital Age of Crowds and Code
Join us at Keble College, Oxford on June 9, 2026, for an afternoon workshop bringing together legal scholars, computer scientists, and institutional designers at the frontier of decentralised dispute resolution!
”Decentralised Justice: Law in the Digital Age of Crowds and Code”, co-organised by Kleros, the Oxford Centre for Socio-Legal Studies (Faculty of Law), and the Department of Computer Science, convenes world-leading researchers and practitioners to examine how blockchain, mechanism design, and artificial intelligence are reshaping the architecture of justice itself.
Traditional legal systems were built for a world of physical courts, national jurisdictions, and slow-moving disputes. The digital age has rendered those assumptions unstable. Cross-border e-commerce, autonomous AI agents and decentralised organisations are the new normal. Yet legal and institutional infrastructure has not caught up.
Kleros offers a case study in what happens when you try to close that gap: an algorithmic dispute resolution protocol operating at scale, adjudicating thousands of cases across industries, geographies, and contract types. The questions it raises (about incentive design, fairness, the rule of law, and the boundaries of automation) are no longer theoretical. They are live.
This workshop brings those questions to Oxford for a rigorous interdisciplinary examination.
Programme
14:00 - 15:30. Law & Society Session. Alternative Dispute Resolution, Digital Environments and Legal Norms.
How do decentralised dispute resolution systems interact with (and challenge) existing legal institutions? This session examines the transformation of international arbitration and the socio-legal implications of algorithmically governed systems.
Federico Ast. Founder, Kleros.
Nicole Stremlau. Professor of Law and Society in a Digital World, University of Oxford.
Florian Grisel. Research Professor, CNRS; Senior Research Fellow, University of Oxford.
Moderator: Fernanda Pirie. Professor of the Anthropology of Law, University of Oxford.
15:30 - 16:00. Coffee Break
16:00 - 17:30. Computer Science & Innovation Session: Mechanism Design, Game Theory, and AI in Decentralised Justice
What does it take to build a justice system in code? This session explores the formal architecture of decentralised dispute resolution: incentive design, jury selection models, peer prediction, and the integration of AI into automated adjudication.
William George. Research Director, Kleros.
Rob Dean. Associate Director, Diales.
Moderator: Federico Ast. Founder, Kleros.
17:30 – 18:00. Drinks Reception
Registration
Date: June 9, 2026
Time: 2:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Venue: Arco Roy Griffiths Room, Keble College, Oxford
Admission: Free. Registration is required in this link.
Whether you are a legal scholar, a computer scientist, or a researcher in mechanism design, this afternoon offers a unique opportunity to engage with the questions that will shape the next generation of legal infrastructure.