[compleatang]

Great points. Eris is agnostic as to what happens outside of the blockchain system. We have purposefully built it so that it could be as centralized and linked to a legally incorporated entity as users like or it could be as decentralized and independent as users like. As to how contracts work, they are simply code. What we would recommend is that if people are interested in having smart contracts that for the time being they would have a coded contract married to (and integrated with) a "normal" contract which conversely integrates the coded contract. Doing such would make it relatively straightforward (we think) for a judge to understand what was happening.