That said, the question of Brexit it seems to me is a different one. I was leery of Brexit because one thing I like about being in the US is any young person in any state has the whole country open to him–to move to to work—and this was what a young British person had with the EU. He could move to and work in Spain or France or Amsterdam whatever if he wanted to. Sort of like in the US. So if I was a young person in Britain I would have opposed Brexit. Yes, yes, despite all the problems with centralization and Brussells.
That said, the question of Brexit it seems to me is a different one. I was leery of Brexit because one thing I like about being in the US is any young person in any state has the whole country open to him–to move to to work—and this was what a young British person had with the EU. He could move to and work in Spain or France or Amsterdam whatever if he wanted to. Sort of like in the US. So if I was a young person in Britain I would have opposed Brexit. Yes, yes, despite all the problems with centralization and Brussells.
nb @GabbSean
Fascinating recent lecture by Dr. Luke Dimitrios Spieker at Cambridge on the theory of democracy as interpreted by the CJEU, the Court of Justice of the European Union, where it considered Malta’s institutionalized “golden passport”/citizenship-by-investment scheme (the 2020 Citizenship by Naturalisation for Exceptional Services by Direct Investment scheme) and ruled that it violated EU law.
Abstract
The CJEU’s decision in Commission v Malta marks the summit of a long-standing, highly controversial debate in European legal scholarship. Considering the Maltese practice of “golden passports” incompatible with EU law, the Court expanded the reach of EU law and established constraints for the conferral of the Member States’ nationalities. At its heart, the decision developed a shared concept of nationality based on a “special relationship of solidarity and good faith”. To justify this bold step, the Court mobilized EU values: “Union citizenship” – we are told – “is based on the common values contained in Article 2 TEU”. In this talk, we will explore how EU values may require a shared concept of nationality and justify the genuine link-requirement established by the Court. At its centre are the notions of democracy and trust, solidarity and belonging. Ultimately, it seems that the Court embraced a communitarian understanding of citizenship – one that builds on belonging.
Biography: Dr Luke Dimitrios Spieker is a postdoctoral researcher at Humboldt University Berlin and a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law. His research explores EU law’s constitutional foundations, including its common values and structural principles as well as Union citizenship and fundamental rights. He has been awarded several prizes, such as the Heinz Meier-Leibnitz-Prize of the German Research Foundation, the UACES Best Book Prize, or the Common Market Law Review Prize for Young Academics.
In its Grand Chamber judgment of 29 April 2025 in Commission v Malta (Case C-181/23), the CJEU held that by operating a scheme that granted Maltese nationality (and thereby Union citizenship) in exchange for predetermined payments or investments—essentially commercializing nationality—Malta failed to fulfill its obligations under Article 20 TFEU (Union citizenship) and Article 4(3) TEU (sincere cooperation). The Court found that such transactional naturalization does not establish the required “special relationship of solidarity and good faith” between the state and its nationals. [continue reading…]
This is my conversation on Liquid Zulu’s Twitter Space (@PunishedZulu), recorded Oct. 12, 2026. Topics discussed include why property rights require scarcity, the case against IP as non-consensual negative servitudes, critiques of Locke, Rand, and utilitarian arguments, Objectivism and Atlas Shrugged, AI training and copyright liability, international IP treaties, and whether Bitcoin can be owned.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with the shadow on the wall. Speak what you think [90]now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said to-day.—”Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.”—Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras[186] was misunderstood, and Socrates,[187] and Jesus, and Luther,[188] and Copernicus,[189] and Galileo,[190] and Newton,[191] and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. 1
Join us for a live conversation with renowned libertarian legal scholar, patent attorney, and author Stephan Kinsella. We dive deep into the foundations of libertarian legal theory, the fundamental flaws of Intellectual Property (IP), and how genuine property rights are rooted in natural rights and Austrian Economics. [continue reading…]
This recording is from my own iPhone. Professional video and audio will follow in due course.
[I have now added the video and improved audio. 10/19/2026]
Leo Zailbert, “Toward Meta-Politics,” Q. J. Austrian Econ. 7, no. 4 (Winter 2004): 113–28
Barry Smith, “An Essay on Material Necessity,” in Philip Hanson & Bruce Hunter, eds., Return of the A Priori (Canadian J. Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 18, 1993): 301–322
Photoelectric effect—light comes in packets, launched quantum
Brownian motion—proved atoms
Special relativity—space and time bend with speed.
And E equals mc squared—mass-energy equivalence.
Today let’s talk about a German from the last century with a mustache.
Named Adolf.
No, not the famous one.
Adolf Reinach was born in 1883, died at 33 in 1917 fighting on the German side in WWI.
A brilliant thinker, a phenomenologist and legal theorist, and was the closest pre-war collaborator of the famous phenomenologist Edmund Husserl
He published a number of important works from about 1905 to 1914, when he joined the German army in WWI and was killed in action three years later, in 1917
Today we have two talks on two of his most important works, at least for Austro-libertarians.
Alessandro has spoken already about his 1913 monograph on the a priori foundations of civil law, published when he was about 30 years old.
and my topic is inspired by his 1905 dissertation “On the Concept of Causality in the Criminal Law”
Also Einstein’s Miracle Year
this paper was a major inspiration for my article “Causation and Aggression” and for Hans Hoppe’s article “Property, Causality, and Liability,” both published in 2004 in the QJAE and each based on our contributions to the 2001
I can only begin to give an overview of Reinach and some of the insights I and Hoppe have extracted from his dissertation
For more details, see our 2004 papers; + Alessandro’s
His 9-10 year publishing career, all in his 20s, also included interesting and important papers on
William James and pragmatism;
Kant and Hume on causality and necessity;
judgment and the ontology of states of affairs;
the phenomenology of deliberation and its ethical and legal significance;
a critique of Natorp’s psychology; and
a 1914 lecture on phenomenology that distinguishes his realist approach from Husserl’s later transcendental idealism
It is quite incredible that Husserl is still relevant today, a century later; as Einstein is
As Barry Smith, a libertarian thinker and prominent ontologist who has helped to promote interest in Reinach’s work, told me recently, interest in Reinach has been growing in recent years
For example: “There has just been established a working group on the ontology of law, where Reinach is accepted as one fundamental influence.”
“If you follow Adolf Reinach on google scholar, some 920 papers are identified since 2022. …”
Grok thinks this is a bit imprecise, but… good enough for government work, as we say
Part of this is also the continued interest in Searle’s work and increasing awareness of the ways in which Searle’s and Reinach’s ideas overlap.
Reinach: theory of social acts; Searle: speech acts. (Grok)
Reinach is of interest to me, and other Misesian Austrians, because of his work on legal theory, causation, and applications of Kant’s apriori methodology to social theory
It is well known that one significant group of libertarians— Ayn Rand and Objectivists—despised Kant because of his so-called “idealism”
Now as Hoppe has conceded, Kant was a somewhat murky thinker and Rand was perhaps relying on second-hand accounts and interpretations of Kant by the more “idealist” American Kantians
Not to be confused with Hoppe’s other interesting distinction between right- and left-libertarianism,
that the right is essentially realistic in recognizing differences, natural authority, hierarchies, elites, whereas the left is unrealistic and egalitarian—
and so libertarianism is a realistic “right” libertarianism
Interestingly, just as some Kantians (Mises, Hoppe) are realistic, and others more idealistic, after 1913 or so, Husserl turned toward transcendental idealism, and the phenomenology movement split into realists (Reinach, and others), who argued for a world that does not depend on consciousness (Ayn Rand would approve), and transcendental idealists (Heidegger, Sartre, and Derrida, and others)
The leading realist phenomenologist, Reinach applied that method to social acts, law, judgment, and motion.
Studies on motion: calls to mind Peter Janich’s aprioristic “protophysics,” e.g. Protophysics of Time; Euclid’s Heritage: Is Space Three-Dimensional?
Before the somewhat recent resurgence of interest in Reinach’s ideas, there had been awareness of and interest in Reinach by various Austrians, including Barry Smith, who has a deep interest in libertarianism, Austrian economics, and ontology
And so it came to be that Guido Hülsmann organized a Mises Institute international symposium on “Reinach and Rothbard” in 2001.
In addition to Guido, the Director, the symposium included presentations by Walter Block, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Larry J. Sechrest, Barry Smith, and myself
Some of these and related articles were published along with others in a symposium issue of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, in 2004
Two of these, by Hans and myself, focused mainly on Reinach’s 1905 dissertation “On the Concept of Causality in the Criminal Law,” the main focus of my talk today
These are: Kinsella, “Causation and Aggression” and Hoppe, “Property, Causality, and Liability”
INCIDENTALLY: I ended up publishing a previously-unpublished translation of this dissertation, by Danish-American philosopher Berit Brogaard, with the assistance of Barry Smith (who was her PhD advisor), in the first volume of my journal Libertarian Papers, in 2009
It had been translated by the American philosopher John F. Crosby, and published in Aletheia in 1983. It was recently republished in Adolf Reinach, The Apriori Foundations of the Civil Law: Along with the Lecture “Concerning Phenomenology,” John F. Crosby, with a foreword by Alasdair MacIntyre (Ontos Verlag, 2012; now De Gruyter), but a good version is not readily available online
Just last week, Barry Smith put me in touch with the translator, John Crosby, and supported my request for permission to reprint this important paper online in our Property and Freedom Journal.
He said possibly yes, so we may be publishing another of Reinach’s most important works
The reason Hans and I both found much of value in Reinach’s paper is its wealth of rich insights and useful examples exploring various cases of causation
As Hoppe points out in his paper, the criminal law, and really all law in general (since all law is enforceable), deals with responsibility for actions
Detour
[MAY HAVE TO SKIP DEPENDING ON TIME]
There is some confusion on this issue among libertarians, some of whom sometimes assume we are responsible for our property
For example: in discussions of strict liability, where it is assumed people are responsible “for their property”
But property is a right not a responsibility
We are responsible for our actions, not “for our property”
Example: If I own a gun and it stolen and used to murder someone, I am not responsible for the murder, even though I owned the gun, because I did not engage in the action of murder. I did not employ my gun as a means to cause a bullet to enter another’s body.
Conversely, the murderer who used my stolen gun is liable for murder even though he did not own the gun.
Or: when I point out that one problem with intellectual property is that IP rights are really (nonconsensual) negative servitudes that prevent others from using their own property, the response is often: but all property rights limit other property rights
But property rightsdo notlimit others’ property rights
Property rights specify who is the owner of a resource
That is, who can exclude others from using it
e., the owner is the person whose permission you need in order to use the owned thing
A property right limits others’ actions: others’ use of (interference with, invasion of) a given resource
Thus, as Hans Hoppe writes, “People can be held liable only for their actions, whether intentional or negligent…”
Now Austrians understand the importance of praxeology, the science of human action, in economics
Praxeology studies the implications and aspects of action: of employing scarce means or resources in the pursuit of future ends
That there is uneasiness, time preference, profit and loss, demonstrated preference, marginal utility, opportunity cost, consumption and production/leisure and labor
Economics is a descriptive or value-free inquiry
It is both teleological (action is purposive) and causal (actor employs causally efficacious means)
But still wertfrei
But praxeology is also crucial for normative and libertarian analysis: determining what actions are violations of rights
For determining what laws are just
What is of interest to Austro-libertarians in Reinach here is his approach to criminal responsibility
Reinach emphasizes that causation and fault are independent elements of liability:
“To cause an event means to activate a condition of success; to intentionally cause an event means to activate a condition that brings about the success. … To intentionally cause something thus means to activate a condition of success, willing that this condition … leads to the success.”
He emphasizes that there can be punishment or liability for a crime, if it is a “condition” of an unlawful outcome, AND which outcome is intended by the actor
This is similar to the concept of causation in the conventional criminal law
But-for causation (factual causation, cause in fact, sine qua non) versus “proximate” cause (“efficient”; legal cause)
To be responsible one has to be a but-for cause—but this is not enough
You also need “proximate” cause
Hitler’s mom is a but-for cause of WWII but not a proximate cause
[NOTE: Jeff Barr pointed out to me after my lecture but-for causation is more connected to tort law than criminal law. I may explore these differences later for for now these various terms in both tort and criminal law serve only as illustrations for our libertarian principles. Additionally, restitution/tort may be the dominant mode of justice in a libertarian society; see Fraud, Restitution, and Retaliation: The Libertarian Approach; and arguably all law—property, contract, tort, criminal law—collapses into one, whether it be criminal into tort or vice-versa. See Areas That Need Development from Libertarian Thinkers, the section Unifying law. Grok, queried on this:
“In common-law jurisdictions (including most U.S. states), but-for causation and proximate/legal cause are used in both tort and criminal law. They are not tort-only concepts. Criminal law uses the same two-step structure for result crimes (homicide, assault causing injury, etc.), but nested inside the traditional elements of a crime and applied under a higher burden of proof and different policy goals. …
They are okay as structural analogies, not off base—so long as you treat them as family resemblances rather than as identity of concepts. The mapping you have used in Causation and Aggression and in KOL498 is the right one; a couple of the verbal pairings are slightly loose.”]
Reinach’s use of “cause” and “condition” is similar to the proximate cause and “cause-in-fact” distinction.
And his analysis is strikingly compatible with the Austro-libertarian understanding of action and responsibility for acting
The libertarian praxeological view: one is responsible for intentional action that actually causes an invasion or aggression (prohibited or unlawful end).
In libertarian analysis, when we ask if someone was the cause of a certain act of aggression, we are asking whether the actor chose and employedmeans to attain the prohibited result.
In other words, an actor is liable for action that causes a nonconsensual use of or invasion of another’s property
But action is the intentional, purposive employment of causally efficacious means to achieve an unlawful end (invasion)
“Causally efficacious” is not a throwaway line
It is understood or implied, but it is crucially important
The reason something is a means of action is because it does change the future outcome that otherwise would occur, in accordance with whatever laws of causality (cause and effect) actually underly reality
Seeding the clouds might be an efficacious way of causing rain
Doing a raindance is not
Likewise praying for or hoping for someone to due is not employing a means that is causally efficacious
Reinach gives several clever examples to illustrate this
“In one colorful example, Asends B into a forest in the hope that he will be struck by lightning.
Compare this to case where A is able to calculate precisely where and when a tree will be struck by lightning, and, with malicious intent, sends B to be at the fateful place where lightning strikes.
In both cases, Reinach argues, Ais the “cause” (our “cause-in-fact”) of B’s death, since B’s death would not have occurred but forA’s having sent him into the forest.
However, Reinach concludes that Amay be punished only in the second case and not in the first.
The difference hinges upon A’s intent. In the first case, Ahoped forB to die, but it was simply wishful thinking: he had no control over the lightning, and no knowledge of any objective likelihood that it would strike where it did.”
Similarly: someone intending or hoping to cause rain by doing a rain dance is not actually the cause if it happens to rain afterwards.
By the way: this analysis of action also helps explain why some crimes are punished more harshly than others
It permits us to distinguish the particular purpose of the action from its intentionality
For example, an actor breaking into someone’s cabin to rob them, or to save their baby during a snowstorm, are both committing trespass
Both are intentional actions: the actor employed means that cause the breaking and entering
Both are liable for this intentional crime
But the purposes, the particular ends, the motivations, are different
The intentionality of the action is what is relevant for determining whether the actor committed aggression
The purpose or motivation can be taken into account for punishment
Thus, first-degree (premeditated) murder is punished more severely than manslaughter, which is punished more severely than negligent homicide
They are all intentional but the motivations and purposes differ
Another example I give in my paper is when Israeli government assassinated Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin in 2004.
Now there are many people, in the United States and Israel, who wanted to see Yassin killed.
But only a very small number of these people intended to kill Yassin themselves or to assist his killers in any way.
The lesson of Reinach’s lightning example is that the people who simply hoped that Yassin would die, or who rejoiced when he was killed, are not responsible for his killing.
They gave his killers silent support and sympathy, but they did not intentionally act with the purpose of killing him.
The team of assassins themselves, and the Israeli government that sponsored them, are responsible for the killing, but not the citizens who merely approve of the assassination.
Alessandro: “Reinach’s death was an incalculable loss for the twentieth century philosophy and one can only speculate about the contributions he could have made if war’s senseless violence hadn’t cut his life at only 33 years age.”
EXTRA
Hoppe: “In light of Reinach’s definitions, we return to Rothbard’s causality criterion. While his criterion is on the one hand too wide in including accidental invasions among punishable offenses, on the other hand it appears too narrow in determining liability.”
And this is what I argue in my chapter: that Rothbard results to too-mechanical doctrines. He does this with contracts by seeming to rule out the use of the word “promise” as effectuating a contractual title transfer. Now he is correct that the essence of contracts is not promising: contracts should not be seen as binding promises or obligations, but as simply consensual transfers of owned resources to someone recipient. But determining whether consent was given is a question of whether it was indicated or communicated; and communication is a matter of language. Interpreting language and communication is always contextual; there is always imprecision and the need for both redundancy and background presumptions. Communication may involve a spoken or written language (that is, it may be verbal); if verbal, it may be written or oral. But even when the agreement to transfer is based on written or orally communicated words, even these words are necessarily construed by presumptions and context.
Context matters. If it is customary to knock on a neighbor’s door to ask a favor, it is presumed that the owner consents to the knocking; if he wants to communicate a different message about his intent and permission, he has to post a no trespassing sign. If you enter a restaurant and order a meal, the customs of paying a reasonable price for a meal can prove implied consent. The consent need not be verbal at all; mere gestures and context can suffice, as with two people from different tribes and speaking different languages engaging in trade, sex, and so on.
Consent to sex or a contractual exchange can be determined from context alone. For this reason we can easily imagine cases where the use of the word “I promise to give you X” is meant by the owner to indicate intent or consent to transfer. After all, if you can contractually transfer ownership without words at all, there is no reason why the use of the (somewhat incorrect) word promise means the transfer was not intended. [“The Title-Transfer Theory of Contract“]
Reinach also has interesting thoughts on contract theory, but ultimately I think they are flawed as viewing contracts as resulting in binding legal obligations. A better way to approach contracts is the title-transfer theory of Rothbard and Evers, developed in the 1970s and 80s. See, e.g., Crescente Molina, “The Conceptual Foundations of Contract Formation,” in Reinach and the Foundations of Private Law, Marietta Auer, Paul B. Miller, Henry E. Smith and James Toomey (Cambridge, 2025).
Everyone is freaking out about the Lindsay Clancy trial and the hung jury. 1 Clancy, who had been having serious mental problems, strangled and killed her three children—Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months—in Duxbury, Massachusetts, on January 24, 2023, and was on trial for first-degree murder. She did not dispute that she killed them. Her defense was lack of criminal responsibility, commonly called an insanity defense. The jury, consisting of 9 women (all white) and 3 men, two white and one black, heard about five weeks of trial and then deliberated for seven days—roughly 38 to 40 hours—and could not reach a verdict. According to later interviews with jurors in the majority, 11 jurors would have voted to acquit on the basis of insanity, while the black male juror, the only non-white member of the panel, would have voted guilty. 2A mistrial was declared on September 4, 2026. Because a hung jury is not an acquittal, prosecutors may retry the case.
The left basically defended Clancy, some on the grounds of postpartum psychosis, but some on ridiculous grounds—e.g., that she didn’t actually commit the murders, or that it was excused because of abuse by her husband or “the Patriarchy.” (She has admitted the killings; her own lawyer has rejected the online theories blaming her ex-husband. See NBC News.) The right, partly in response to these ridiculous left/feminist takes, started blaming women in general for siding with Clancy, saying this shows women should not have the right to vote, and so on. Many on the right and many libertarians celebrated the lone juror who refused to acquit even though, according to interviews with other jurors, he admitted that the prosecution had not proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt. (The holdout himself has not spoken publicly; that account comes from other jurors.) [continue reading…]
See, e.g., Facebook posts by Rob Wicks; Mark Edge; Mark Edge 2; this tweet. I haven’t followed it and am only using it here, as is my wont, to illustrate and discuss more general libertarian and related principles. [↩]
I was raised in Ascension Parish, in Galvez/Prairieville, Louisiana, which is next to Gonzales, the soi-disant JambalayaCapital of the World—it has held its annual Jambalaya Festival annually since 1968. And yes, we specialize there in Cajun, or brown, jambalaya—similar to African/Nigerian jollof rice—not the Creole or “red” jambalaya made with tomato paste and more popular in New Orleans and other parts. 1
As I noted in my little biography, 2 I attended private Catholic schools in East Baton Rouge Parish—St. George Elementary and Catholic High School—from first grade through high school, unlike my brother and sister and all the local kids, who attended the local public schools, such as Galvez Elementary and St. Amant High School. [continue reading…]
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