Policy Format

Court policy and dispute policy specification — rules and guidelines for jurors

Kleros uses two kinds of policy documents:

1. Court policies — define the general rules for a specific Kleros court. Registered in the PolicyRegistry contract and displayed to jurors in every dispute in that court.
2. Dispute policies — define the specific rules for a particular arbitrable app. Referenced via policyURI in the dispute template. Jurors are expected to read both.

Both are JSON files stored on IPFS.

---

Court Policy JSON

{
  "name": "General Court Policy",
  "description": "Rules for the General Court — handles disputes not covered by specialized courts.",
  "summary": "The General Court is the court of last resort for disputes without a specialized subcourt. Jurors should apply reasonable judgment to the facts presented.",
  "requiredFields": [
    {
      "label": "Contract terms",
      "description": "The original agreement between the parties, if any"
    },
    {
      "label": "Evidence of breach",
      "description": "Specific evidence showing how the agreement was violated"
    }
  ],
  "rulingOptions": {
    "titles": ["Option A", "Option B"],
    "descriptions": [
      "What happens if Option A is selected",
      "What happens if Option B is selected"
    ]
  },
  "uri": "/ipfs/QmPolicyFileHash"
}

---

Dispute Policy (per-app)

Dispute policies are linked via the policyURI field in dispute templates. They define how jurors should rule for your specific application.

A well-written dispute policy should include:

Section	Description
Context	What your app does and what the dispute represents
Ruling criteria	Exact conditions for each ruling option
Edge cases	Partial fulfillment, ambiguous evidence, missing info
Refuse to Arbitrate	When jurors should select ruling 0 (invalid dispute, out of scope)
Evidence requirements	What types of evidence are acceptable

Example Dispute Policy Structure

{
  "name": "Escrow V2 Dispute Policy",
  "version": "1.0",
  "description": "Rules for resolving escrow payment disputes on Escrow V2.",
  "rulingCriteria": {
    "0": "Refuse to Arbitrate — The dispute is invalid, the question is unanswerable, or critical evidence is missing.",
    "1": "Refund the Buyer — The seller failed to deliver the goods or services as described.",
    "2": "Pay the Seller — The seller fulfilled their obligations as described in the transaction terms."
  },
  "edgeCases": [
    "If delivery is partial, consider whether it materially meets the contract terms.",
    "If the buyer raised the dispute in bad faith with no evidence, prefer ruling 2.",
    "If terms are ambiguous and both parties have plausible claims, prefer ruling 0."
  ],
  "evidenceGuidelines": "Acceptable: screenshots, delivery confirmations, contract terms, payment records. Not acceptable: personal testimony without supporting evidence.",
  "policyURI": "/ipfs/QmPolicyIPFSHash"
}

---

specification Field in Dispute Templates

Dispute templates may include a specification field referencing the KIP (Kleros Improvement Proposal) or standard the template follows:

{
  "specification": "KIP-99",
  ...
}

This is informational — it helps auditors and integrators understand which standard governs the template’s structure. Reality V2 uses this to link to the Reality.eth arbitration spec.

---

PolicyRegistry Contract

function setPolicy(uint96 _courtID, string calldata _courtName, string calldata _policyURI) external

Only the KlerosCore governor can register court policies. The _policyURI is an IPFS URI pointing to the court policy JSON.

To read the current policy for a court:

(string memory name, string memory uri) = policyRegistry.policies(courtID);

---

Tips for Writing Good Policies

• Write for a general audience — jurors are not legal experts or domain specialists
• Use concrete examples for each ruling option
• Specify exactly what evidence is sufficient to shift the ruling
• Avoid ambiguous language like “reasonable” without defining what it means in your context
• Test the policy with mock disputes before deployment
• Store on IPFS with multiple pinning providers (Pinata, Infura, Cloudflare) for permanence