Policy Writing Guide

Guide to writing dispute policies for Kleros integrators: what to include, structure, examples, and best practices for clear juror decisions on Court cases.

Policy Writing Guide

The dispute policy is the primary document presented to jurors when they evaluate a case. It functions like a piece of legislation: it defines the rules jurors apply to the evidence and arguments before them.

Jurors use three categories of information to decide their vote:

1. Evidence submitted by the disputing parties and any third parties
2. The dispute policy written by the integrator (you)
3. The court policy of the court handling the case (if the above two are insufficient)

A well-written dispute policy leads to faster resolution, fewer appeals, and more predictable outcomes.

---

What to Include

Section	Description
Parties	Who are the parties involved? How are they identified?
Subject matter	What is the nature of the service, product, or agreement?
Conditions	What specific conditions must be met for each ruling option?
Evidence requirements	What types of evidence should jurors consider? What format should evidence be in?
Edge cases	What happens in ambiguous situations? What is the default ruling?
Definitions	Define any technical terms or domain-specific language

---

Tips

• Be specific. Vague policies lead to inconsistent rulings and more appeals.
• Cover the “what if” scenarios. Think about what happens when evidence is missing, incomplete, or contradictory.
• State the default ruling explicitly. If jurors cannot determine the correct answer from the evidence, what should they choose?
• Test your policy by asking someone unfamiliar with your project to read it and explain what they would rule in a sample scenario.
• Review policies of existing Kleros courts on court.kleros.io for examples.

---

Policy Storage

Policies are uploaded to IPFS and registered on-chain via the PolicyRegistry contract. Child courts inherit policies from their parent courts, so General Court policies apply as a fallback everywhere.

---

Get Help

The Kleros team has experience writing policies for oracle use cases, curation registries, and escrow disputes. Contact [e-mail] for review and guidance.