Dr. Jason Grant Allen, LL.M.
Jason Allen is a Senior Fellow in RG 17. He holds a BA & LLB (Hons) from the University of Tasmania, LLM in International Economic Law from the University of Augsburg, and a PhD in Law from the University of Cambridge. He is a qualified lawyer in New York and Australia (currently non-practising). He was Judicial Assistant to Sir Geoffrey Vos, Chancellor of the High Court of England and Wales, in 2016-2017. Jason came to Berlin as an Alexander von Humboldt Post-Doctoral Fellow. He is a Principal Research Fellow at the HU Berlin Centre for British Studies, and holds affiliations at the Queen Mary University London Centre for Commercial Law Studies, the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, the University of New South Wales, and the University of Tasmania.
Jason writes, speaks, and consults on various topics in “law and technology”. His work as a Senior Fellow centres on the legal status of “cryptoassets” and “smart contracts”, forming part of a broader research agenda on the interaction of legal orders and technological systems.
Positions at Weizenbaum Institut
Former Research Fellow:
Research Group "Trust in Distributed Environments"
September - December 2019
Projects
Jason is a joint P.I. on a three year, DFG-funded project on the life and work of F.A. Mann, who fled racial persecution in Berlin to London and wrote The Legal Aspect of Money in 1938—a book that has substantially shaped the field of monetary law in the Commonwealth legal systems. This project is based at the HU Berlin Centre for British Studies and critically engages with the development of monetary law in the 20th century with particular emphasis on how conventional theory is currently dealing with technological changes. Jason is also co-investigator on a one-year, ESRC-funded pilot project “Legal and Economic Conceptions of Money” within the Rebuilding Macroeconomics network.
While at the Weizenbaum Institute, Jason is editing a Special Edition of the Journal of Law, Information and Science on the topic of “Smart Legal Contracts”.
Publications
Latest Selection
J.G. Allen and R.M. Lastra, “Border Problems: Mapping the Third Border” (2020) Modern Law Review (forthcoming).
J.G. Allen and R.M. Lastra, “Towards a European Governance Framework for Cryptoassets” (SUERF Policy Notes Issue No 110, November 2019) (https://www.suerf.org/docx/f_ca91c5464e73d3066825362c3093a45f_7839_suerf.pdf)
Apolline Blandin, Ann Sofie Cloots, Hatim Hussain, Michel Rauchs, Rasheed Saleuddin, Jason Grant Allen, Bryan Zhang, and Katherine Cloud, “Global Cryptoasset Regulatory Landscape Study” (CCAF and the Nomura Institute, May 2019) (https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/fileadmin/user_upload/research/centres/alternative-finance/downloads/2019-04-ccaf-global-cryptoasset-regulatory-landscape-study.pdf)
J.G. Allen, “Property in Digital Coins” (2019) 8(1) European Property Law Journal 64 (https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/eplj.2019.8.issue-1/eplj-2019-0005/eplj-2019-0005.xml)
R.M. Lastra and J.G. Allen, “Virtual Currencies in the Eurosystem: Challenges Ahead” (Study Requested by the European Parliament ECON Committee for the Monetary Dialogue July 2018) (https://www.europarl.europa.eu/cmsdata/150541/DIW_FINAL%20publication.pdf)
J.G. Allen, “Wrapped and Stacked: ‘Smart Contracts’ and the Interaction of Natural and Formal Language” (2018) 14(4) European Contract Law Journal 307 (https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/ercl.2018.14.issue-4/ercl-2018-1023/ercl-2018-1023.xml)
J.G. Allen, “The Office of the Crown” (2018) 77(2) Cambridge Law Journal 298 (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-law-journal/article/office-of-the-crown/0FA18FA76FEBDDA6ED93DDC9ABD6081F)
Miscellaneous
Twitter:
@DrJGAllen