Shrutarshi Basu (Harvard), Nate Foster (Cornell), James Grimmelmann (Cornell), Shan Parikh (Oracle), and Ryan Richardson (Google) have posted “A Programming Language for Future Interests” (24 Yale Journal of Law and Technology 75 (2022)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Learning the system of estates in land and future interests can seem like learning a new language. Scholars and students must master unfamiliar phrases, razor-sharp rules, and arbitrarily complicated structures. Property law is this way not because future interests are a foreign language, but because they are a programming language.

This Article presents Orlando, a programming language for expressing conveyances of future interests, and Littleton, a freely available online interpreter (at https://conveyanc.es) that can diagram the interests created by conveyances and model the consequences of future events. Doing so has three payoffs. First, formalizing future interests helps students and teachers of the subject by allowing them to visualize and experiment with conveyances. Second, the process of formalization is itself deeply illuminating about property doctrine and theory. And third, the computer-science subfield of programming language theory has untapped potential for legal scholarship: a programming-language approach takes advantage of the linguistic parallels between legal texts and computer programs.

Johan David Michels (Queen Mary University of London, School of Law – Centre for Commercial Law Studies), Sharon Hartung, and Christopher Millard (Queen Mary University of London, School of Law – Centre for Commercial Law Studies) have posted “Digital Assets: A Call To Action” on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Digital assets – such as social media accounts, emails, crypto-assets and photographs – are an increasingly important part of people’s lives. But what happens to these assets when someone dies or is incapacitated? Are families able to access them? The Cloud Legal Project worked with the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners to survey 500+ estate practitioners. The survey asked practitioners about their experiences with clients’ digital assets. We found that there are difficulties involved in obtaining access to digital assets on death or incapacity. These difficulties include a lack of clarity around property rights and a lack of cooperation from cloud service providers. Given the sentimental and monetary value such assets can hold, we believe families deserve better. To resolve these problems, we call for improved legislation, more awareness for both estate practitioners and clients, and better cooperation with cloud service providers.