Evolvable Law

Lead PI: John Clippinger

"then the rule adapts itself to the new reasons which have been found for it, and enters on a new career. The old form receives a new content, and in time even the form modifies itself to fit the meaning it has received."

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

The Evolvable Law Project is investigating different areas of the law to assess how biological and evolutionary principles can be applied to law and innovation. Beginning with contract law, the Evolvable Law Project is developing use cases that can drive the design and development process.

The first such use case is an application to model the rules and terms of a complex venture capital term sheet. That term sheet was then “evolved” to preserve certain “fitness conditions” as represented by capitalization tables. It used a genetic algorithm to generate new term sheets to meet the constraints of different parties. This use case formed the basis of the Evolvable Contract Spreadsheet tool.

photo: BY-NC-SA, Kaptain Kobold