# Pacta sunt servanda: legal contracts in Stipula

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.11069 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.11069/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 21 Oct 2021.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [By Their Fruits You Will Know Them: Comparing Formalizations of Law by the Decisions They Encode](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.25186/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

There is a growing interest in running legal contracts on digital systems, at the same time, it is important to understand to what extent software contracts may capture legal content. We then undertake a foundational study of legal contracts and we distill four main features: agreement, permissions, violations and obligations. We therefore design Stipula, a domain specific language that assists lawyers in programming legal contracts through specific patterns. The language is based on a small set of abstractions that correspond to common patterns in legal contracts, and that are amenable to be executed either on centralized or on distributed systems. Stipula comes with a formal semantics and an observational equivalence, that provide for a clear account of the contracts' behaviour. The expressive power of the language is illustrated by a set of examples that correspond to template contracts that are often used in practice.