Smart Labor Contracts: Scope and limitations in the Colombian legal system

Abstract

The advance of new technologies and their permeability in legal sciences gave rise to an automatable technology called “Smart Contract” or intelligent contracts, which applied to the legal field are called “Legal Smart Contract”, which obey a disruptive execution technology. contractual automatic that works based on Blockchain. In the regulatory pyramid structure, there is no robust formal source that, in accordance with the positivist system, guarantees a solid liability regime against the risks of these new technologies. However, in accordance with the principle of technological neutrality, its applicability is viable, taking into account the State's duty to guarantee the use of ICTs; however, in labor matters there is no consensus on their use in view of the harm they can cause. Therefore, this article analyzes this new contractual technology, as well as employment contracts, to answer the research question: how could employment contracts be executed through Legal Smart Contract? For this purpose, legal dogmatics and hermeneutics are used, with a qualitative approach, with the main objective of determining the normative arguments that support the applicability of this technology in employment contracts. This investigation concludes that employment contracts cannot be executed by Legal Smart Contracts, considering the impossibility of self-execution of the requirements required by the Substantive Labor Code, the object of labor law and the dominant power of the employer in the employment relationship.