I delivered the following lecture yesterday: “The Economics and Ethics of Intellectual Property,” Loyola Economics Club and Louisiana Mu chapter of Omicron Delta Epsilon, Loyola University—New Orleans, Miller Hall (12:30 pm–1:45 pm, Feb. 24, 2026). Hosts were the aforementioned Econ club and econ honor society, as well as Walter Block and Leo Krasnozhon. 1 Audio for the Q&A portion was poor due to some technical mishaps, but has been boosted as much as possible.
I love law reviews. In law school I aced grades the first semester so thought I was a shoo-in, but then I started relaxing, figuring hey, law school is easier than I thought, so I started slacking, playing too much Robotron (I even rented a Robotron arcade game for a few months to get it out of my system), 1 grades fell and I missed the law review cutoff. I tried to write on and thought I was a shoo-in because my paper was ossum, but… no go. Anyway, jokes on them because I’ve now published in many law reviews now (as well as books), not only libertarian topics, but also purely legal topics. 2 Anyway they just fascinate me. 3 I even love footnotes. 4[continue reading…]
For a while I toyed with the idea of writing corrections of Supreme Court opinions which are often wrong and, even when the results are right (e.g. A Libertarian Defense of Kelo and Limited Federal Power), the reasoning is typically often still confused, muddled, statist, legal-positivist, anti-decentralist (anti-antifederalist), and economically illiterate (other than that, it’s just fine). I would play Shadow Justice. Great use of my time. See, e.g., my short-lived blog The Shadow Justice which I discontinued because I was lazy too busy.
Anyway in a recent case, Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump (Feb. 2o, 2026), 1 the Supremes struck down Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose tariffs, holding that IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs. (I also thought Roberts was basically right to conclude that Obamacare’s mandatory fees are permissible, by characterizing them as a “tax.” Unfortunately.) [continue reading…]
“What we cannot speak about, we must pass over in silence.”
–Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Humans act in incredibly stupid, as well as incredibly clever ways. Trade and production coexists alongside murder and rape. The application of deductive reasoning to actions such as trade and production (“praxeology“) gives us interesting insights into economics. We can deduce trade to be mutually beneficial and artificially low interest rates to cause an unsustainable economic boom. However to apply praxeology only to trade and production, as if they were the sum total of human activity, would be somewhat of an understatement. Us humans know some other tricks.
As mentioned in Robert Pascal, R.I.P., after law school I became friends with retired Professor Emeritus Robert Pascal, a famous law professor at LSU that I never met until after I graduated (likewise, I also became friends and correspondent with LSU Law professor Saúl Litvinoff after graduation). 1 We had a good deal of correspondence in the 1990s and even after, when I was an attorney in Houston and then Philadelphia, and would meet on occasion at his home in Baton Rouge when I would return home for visits. He passed away in 2018 at the age of 102.
Much of his correspondence with me was elegantly hand-written. It spanned from 1993 to 2011, and I have at least 75 pages worth. I may post it some day after reviewing it more closely, even though some of my youthful enthusiasm and desperation to find anyone intelligent to converse with is a bit embarrassing now (this was before the Internet starting making it easier to discourse with remote people in our Phyles). 2
But as I mention him in Herman, The Louisiana Civil Code: A European Legacy for the United States, I’ll post below some selected text from two of our interchanges in 1993–1994, concerning, in part, the “Tournament of Scholars” between Pascal and Batiza. As was clear in our first discussion, Pascal was a leftist and what he called a “catholic communist,” small-c catholic, he emphasized. But he was smart and courtly and decent and I really liked and admired him. [continue reading…]
Phyles; se my note here: Re phyles, I am reminded of the idea behind “flag theory” discussed in Emile Phaneuf III and Rahim Taghizadegan, “Jurisdiction Shopping: The Forgotten Logic Behind Flag Theory,” The Daily Economy (February 2, 2026): “Harry Schultz, who coined the term “flag theory,” framed his thinking in an explicitly Austrian register, crediting Friedrich Hayek as his main economic inspiration and frequently citing Ludwig von Mises and Mises’s American student Hans Sennholz. The same pattern appears among other popularizers of international diversification such as Jerome Tuccille and WG Hill. In other words, the “flags” idea did not arise in a vacuum. It grew naturally from a worldview that treats institutions as constraints to compare, compete, and, when necessary, exit.” [↩]
“The Renaissance emphasized a “rebirth” (from the French word renaître, meaning to be born again) of classical Greek and Roman knowledge, arts, and culture.” Why was it dormant or lost?
list the top 10 enlightenment figures, and the top 10 classical liberal figures, and show overlap.
explain the difference between classical liberalism, libertarianism, and conservatism, and whether libertarianism is right or left, and what about the influence on libertarianism of both classical liberalism as well as the Old Right thinkers and the reason who there seems to be more of an affinity between libertarians and modern conservatives and Republicans than there does to be between libertarians and democrats. Consult https://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/09/hans-hermann-hoppe/smack-down/ and https://stephankinsella.com/2022/01/the-three-fusionisms/
what is the difference between the renaissance and enlightment. explain their significance and relation to classical liberalism
now combine all your previous answers into one final unified overall report. And include in this an analysis of the question of whether libertarianism is of the left, or of the right, and trace its progenitors, influences, and origins. Consult also the attached
In my libertarian and law school studies I was fascinated with law and legal history, reading books and articles touching on both topics, e.g. Bruce Benson’s The Enterprise of Law, Bruno Leoni’s Freedom and the Law, and so on. 1 As an aspiring legal scholar and lawyer, and Louisiana-educated “civilian” lawyer, I was also interested not only in the common law but the Roman and European civil law, and in law reviews in general. Even footnotes. 2 I also became interested in international law when pursuing an LL.M. in international law at King’s College London, and ended up publishing a lot in this area and melding it with my libertarian-related theorizing. [continue reading…]
In my libertarian and law school studies I was fascinated with law and legal history, reading books and articles touching on both topics, e.g. Bruce Benson’s The Enterprise of Law, Bruno Leoni’s Freedom and the Law, and so on. 1 As an aspiring legal scholar and lawyer, and Louisiana-educated “civilian” lawyer, I was also interested not only in the common law but the Roman and European civil law, and in law reviews in general. Even footnotes. 2 I also became interested in international law when pursuing an LL.M. in international law at King’s College London, and ended up publishing a lot in this area and melding it with my libertarian-related theorizing. [continue reading…]
I recently added the text of this old chapter of mine to the post below on my legal blog. It was Appendix I to a book I co-authored with a colleague, but of course I wrote that appendix.
Kinsella, “Dialogical Arguments for Libertarian Rights” and “Defending Argumentation Ethics: Reply to Murphy & Callahan,” both in Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023)
I came across an interesting reference in Alessandro Fusillo, “Rothbard, Philosopher of Law,” in Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment, Stephan Kinsella and Hans-Hermann Hoppe, eds. (forthcoming 2026):
According to Giovanni Birindelli, the universalization test is the only criterion to distinguish arbitrary rules from an objectively founded legal system. He argues that the only rule that passes the test is the non-aggression principle which justifies coercion (self-defense) as a means to uphold self-ownership. Giovanni Birindelli, “L’etica dell’uguaglianza davanti alla legge” (“The ethics of equality before the law“), Giovanni’s Substack (Nov. 5, 2023).
I delivered the following lecture yesterday: “The Economics and Ethics of Intellectual Property,” Loyola Economics Club and Louisiana Mu chapter of Omicron Delta Epsilon, Loyola University—New Orleans, Miller Hall (12:30 pm–1:45 pm, Feb. 24, 2026). Hosts were the aforementioned Econ club and econ honor society, as well as Walter Block and Leo Krasnozhon. 1 Audio for the Q&A portion was poor due to some technical mishaps, but has been boosted as much as possible.
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