Here you can find Ulex, the open source legal system, under git version control.
An open-source legal system for special jurisdictions, online markets, ZEDEs, seasteads, and other startup communities. It combines tested and trusted rule sets from private and international organizations in a robust but flexible configuration.
Ulex protects personal and property rights with an efficient and fair dispute resolution process, promoting the rule of law.
Ulex is not imposed by any government but instead adopted by the mutual consent of those it governs.
- Special legal jurisdictions can encourage local growth and inspire wider reforms.
- The rules that govern these zones have to come from somewhere.
- Ulex offers a neutral and international alternative to the legal systems of particular nation states.
- It offers a flag-free set of rules drawn from private, international, and intergovernmental organizations.
- These tested and trusted rule sets embody international best practices and come free of any foreign sovereign's control.
The default procedure for resolving disputes in Ulex has three elements:
- Judges: Each of the opposing parties chooses a judge, and those two judges choose a third.
- Remedies: The judges choose a remedy offered by one of the parties or dismiss the case.
- Costs: The losing party pays the winning party's reasonable legal costs.
Ulex also includes more detailed procedural rules, authored by preeminent nongovernmental organizations.
Most of the substantive rules of Ulex come from select Restatements of the Common Law, Uniform Codes, and Model Rules.
Ulex also includes a few bespoke rules.
(Note that some institutions claim copyrights in some of the rule sets invoked by Ulex.)
Ulex's meta rules ensure that all the various parts work together without contradiction and to practical effect.
Ulex follows the lead of open source operating systems like Unix, GNU, and Linux.
Whereas those codes run computers, though, Ulex runs legal systems.
In either case, users can download, use, and modify the rules free of charge.
How can you run Ulex? Either move to a jurisdiction that has adopted the legal system or, in what amounts to much the same thing, mutually agree with others to have Ulex govern your legal relations. The first option remains for now only a theoretical possibility; the second calls for little more than a handshake.
To make it formal, an agreement to run Ulex should have a choice of law and forum clause along these lines: "Ulex 1.2 governs any claim or question arising under or related to this agreement, including the proper forum for resolving disputes, all rules applied therein, and the form and effect of any judgment."
For greatest accuracy, citations to Ulex should note the version; e.g.: "Ulex 1.2" or "Ulex 1.2 (2020)." Particular rules can be cited using this format: "Ulex 1.2, Rule 2.6.5 (2020)" or, when greater exactitude is needed, "Ulex 1.2, Rule 2.6.5, §§ 2-102 & 2-103 (2020)."
- Video from BIL, in Los Angeles
- Text of version 1.0
- Text of version 1.1
- Text of version 1.2
- Chapter 3.7 of Tom W. Bell, "Your Next Government?"
- A brief look at Ulex on the Charter Cities Institute blog