Announcing The Universal Principles of Liberty

I’m pleased to announce the results of a project I’ve been working on with other libertarians for some time: The Universal Principles of Liberty (finalized and published Aug. 14, 2025).

I’d like to explain here how this came about.

I’ve been a libertarian since I was in high school and increasingly involved over the years learning about liberty and have devoted a lot of time to developing libertarian ideas, by my speaking and writing, ¹ and even in various forms of activism. Yes, despite my regular criticisms of activists and activism, I of course have participated in activism of various types—debating with family and friends and others, voting, participating in various groups; joining the Libertarian Party years ago and now serving on its Judicial Committee. ²

I’ve also been aware of various libertarian freedom oriented projects over the years and participated in many of them, such as helping to draft the Liberland Constitution, ³ trying to consult on platforms such as that of the Mises Caucus and the Libertarian Party ⁴, consulting on lawsuits and amicus briefs, and even drafting proposed legislation. ⁵

As my experience with these projects and my understanding of the nature of liberty and law grew and matured and deepened, ⁶ and my skepticism of these attempts and projects grew, ⁷ it has become clearer that liberty will likely not be achieved instantly by activist efforts and also that is premature to try to write a “libertarian law code” or “libertarian constitution,” for many reasons. For one, “constitutions” are inherently statist documents whose main purpose is to set up a state, which is antithetical to law and justice. Their purpose is not to do justice or protect rights; it is to constitute, or make up, or create or justify, a state. This is why a project like Liberland is doomed to failure. For example if someone simply claims ownership of some territory by fiat then even if that claim is just, setting up a state and a simulated constitution that apes the features of other states and constitutions is only playing the statist game. This is not the way to go. As I noted elsewhere, I like how libertarian sci-fi novelist L. Neil Smith, in his alternate history novel Tom Paine Maru, uses “Constitution” as an epithet or swear word: “’Constitution, Lucille,’ It was the first time that I had sworn in Confederate.” ⁸

If liberty is ever achieved, it will only be in an environment where there is sufficient support among actors for the principles of liberty. In my view, humanity is still in its adolescence; we are mired in statist thinking, ignorance about economics and the history and principles of liberty, in thrall to tribalist superstitions and religion and, influenced by state propaganda, the Great Fiction that the state is necessary and inevitable. but of course, as Bastiat observed, “The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.” ⁹

Now I do not think a libertarian world is impossible but I am not persuaded activism will get us there. I used to think that if people were just economically literate then, since most have decent values, then … voila. But even if that were true, I don’t think it’s ever possible to teach a lot of people about economics; they are just interested in other things. Handing out libertarian pamphlets to cousins and uncles at Thanksgiving dinners is not gonna do the trick.

My hope is that various “teaching moments”—such as the increasing awareness of the unworkability of socialism after the USSR’s collapse in 1991 ¹⁰—and increasing prosperity, perhaps ushered along by communication and the Internet, AI and robots and technological productivity gains and perhaps Bitcoin, will lead to an increasingly liberal and humane society.

We can at least imagine a future world where states have disappeared or withered away or atrophied to relics as the monarchy in the UK has. Even in such a world, we would be free of only one source of injustice and aggression: that perpetrated by the state. There will always be crime and injustice even in a fully private law society, precisely because people have free will and human norms (moral laws, legal laws, widely respected rights) are not causal laws and rights can be violated. Just as we have inflation and the business cycle because central banks that have the power to print money always will, in a free, liberal, utopian society some people will always commit crime. There will always be a need for property rights, law, and justice, just as there will always be a need for money because even in a “post-scarcity” society there will still always be scarcity in a fundamental sense and thus a need for property rights designed to make conflict-free interaction possible and money prices to permit rational economic calculation and cardinal accounting and reckoning.

In the meantime we can still work to achieve liberty and engage in activism if only to be on the right side of history and on the side of the good and not the evil. There is a scene in C.S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair, when the Emerald Witch has Puddleglum and the others in her underground lair and is trying to make them believe Narnia and Aslan (the Jesus figure) are not real. Puddleglum shoves his foot in the fire to break the spell, and says:

We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia. ¹¹

Likewise, the reason to fight for liberty is because it’s right.

And we can prepare for the future, perhaps by setting up a Future of Freedom Fund (another project I am working on with Pat Tinsley; more on this in upcoming months), and focus nurturing the Remnant. ¹² We can work in the short term but also aim at the medium or even long term; we can try to have low time preference and maintain hope for the future, so we do not burnout and become waystation libertarians and postlibertarians. ¹³ In other words we can keep elaborating and developing our understanding of liberty while we work for liberty in our own lives and in the world.

We have reached a point where our understanding of history, economics, and law enables us to codify and state our principles. We have thousands of years of history to draw on—the 1000 years of the Roman Law, the 1000 years of the Anglo-American common law, for example, and the last 70 or so years of work of thinkers in the modern libertarian movement which drew on this and the preceding classical liberal tradition, and which has matured now with the more modern Austro-libertarian work such as that of Murray Rothbard and Hans-Hermann Hoppe and the related economic views of Ludwig von Mises, and many others. ¹⁴

The time has come to state our principles clearly, to serve as a basis for any future legal systems. This does not need to a detailed, working legal system, for two reasons. First, it is premature. Second, we must recognize that there are limits to armchair and deductive, acontextual reasoning; law has to develop in a certain process, and to be just, has to be based on just principles but developed over time in a decentralized, organic process. The role of libertarian thinkers is to identify, clarify, develop, state, and explain our principles, and to understand existing law and criticize it in light of these principles.

I had been thinking for some time about restating in more systematic form our principles—not extended arguments for or explanations of these principles (which I attempt in LFFS), but a clear statement of our principles. Something that can be built on, and that people interested in liberty can rally around, something that could be used to guide the laws of any future liberty-minded community. Something more fleshed out that my earlier, briefer attempts, ¹⁵ but limited to the core principles and avoiding areas still in development or where there is still significant disagreement among libertarians (e.g., abortion).

I was contacted in late 2023 by @_FreeMax, who had, like me, also been involved in Liberland. He also wanted to prepare a statement of libertarian principles. We had many discussions about this. I enlisted three brilliant Austro-anarchist attorneys and legal theorists to consult on this project: Italian attorney Alessandro Fusillo, ¹⁶ Swiss attorney David Dürr, ¹⁷ and fellow American attorney Patrick C. Tinsley. ¹⁸ Hans-Hermann Hoppe served as adviser, supporter, and “Godfather” to the project.

I finally found time to write a draft document, the “Fundamental Principles of Justice,” which is included as an appendix here. We used this and other material to prepare The Universal Principles of Liberty, which was finalized and published (on the BTC blockchain here) on Aug. 14, 2025.

What’s next? We hope it can serve as a model for other libertarian projects and theoretical work, perhaps as an influence to things like Libertarian Party platforms, or, in the future, as a basis for a private legal system. The principles are general can aim to sere as a basis to guide the development of a real legal system drawing on principles of existing private law (the Roman Law, Anglo-American common law, and so on) ¹⁹ as well as scholarly work from commentators, the development of secondary or supplemental principles, and so on.

Freemax is also working on a project that will incorporate the Principles; more details on that to come in upcoming months.

I also plan to write a detailed commentary on the Principles in upcoming weeks.

Stay tuned.

1. See biographical pieces here and bio here; Stephan Kinsella, Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023) [LFFS]; Kinsella on Liberty Podcast. [↩]
2. Member of the Judicial Committee of the Libertarian Party (2022–2026; Chair Jan. 1, 2023–July 31, 2023). [↩]
3. “The Voluntaryist Constitution,” Mises Wire (10/24/2017). [↩]
4. Aggression and Property Rights Plank in the Libertarian Party Platform. [↩]
5.  UK Proposal for Banking Reform: Fractional-Reserve Banking versus Deposits and Loans. [↩]
6. See “Legislation and the Discovery of Law in a Free Society,” in LFFS; On the Role of Commentators and Codes and the Oracles of the Law; On the Non Liquet in Libertarian Theory and Armchair Theorizing; Roman Law and Hypothetical Cases; KOL020 | “Libertarian Legal Theory: Property, Conflict, and Society: Lecture 3: Applications I: Legal Systems, Contract, Fraud” (Mises Academy, 2011); “Kinsella’s Libertarian “Constitution” or: State Constitutions vs. the Libertarian Private Law Code.” [↩]
7. See discussion of various projects in the past, such as some I have been involved in, in KOL359 | State Constitutions vs. the Libertarian Private Law Code (PFS 2021); KOL345 | Kinsella’s Libertarian “Constitution” or: State Constitutions vs. the Libertarian Private Law Code (PorcFest 2021); Aggression and Property Rights Plank in the Libertarian Party Platform; Creative Common Law Project, R.I.P. and Waystation Libertarians. [↩]
8. See KOL359 | State Constitutions vs. the Libertarian Private Law Code (PFS 2021); KOL345 | Kinsella’s Libertarian “Constitution” or: State Constitutions vs. the Libertarian Private Law Code (PorcFest 2021). [↩]
9.  Frédéric Bastiat, “The State,” in Selected Essays on Political Economy, Seymour Cain, trans.; George B. de Huszar, ed. (FEE, 1995 [1848]). Also translated as “Government is that great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.” Bastiat, “Government,” in The Bastiat Collection, 2d. ed. (Mises Institute, 2007), p. 99. [↩]
10. This example is mentioned in Activism, Achieving a Free Society, and Writing for the Remnant; KOL187 | Anarchast with Jeff Berwick Discussing IP, Anarcho-libertarianism, and Legislation vs. Private Law (2012); KOL401 | Sazmining Twitter Space: Bitcoin & Property Rights; Bodrum Days and Nights: The Fifth Annual Meeting of the Property and Freedom Society: A Partial Report; Libertarian Answer Man: Does It Matter How Law is Made?; Where I’ve Changed My Mind; Whiteness and Libertarianism. [↩]
11. Lewis in the Silver Chair. [↩]
12. Activism, Achieving a Free Society, and Writing for the Remnant. [↩]
13. On Taxing Harvard: Ranting about Thuggocrats and Waystation/Post-libertarians; Conspiracy Libertarians, Waystation Libertarians, Activists vs. Principled Libertarians. [↩]
14. On the modern libertarian movement being about 70 years old, see Kinsella, “Libertarianism After Fifty Years: What Have We Learned?“, in LFFS. [↩]
15. platform [↩]
16. PFP226 | Alessandro Fusillo, State-Making as War-Making: The Case of Italy (PFS 2021); PFP244 | Alessandro Fusillo, “Roman Law Reconsidered” (PFS 2022); PFP255 | Alessandro Fusillo, “The State of Emergency: The Government’s Illegal Tool of Domination” (PFS 2023); PFP274 | Alessandro Fusillo: “Liberalism, Anarchism, Fascism: A Brief Look at the Modern History of Italy” (PFS 2024). [↩]
17. Private Law Society: Answering some of the “Difficult” Questions; PFP165 | David Dürr, “On How to Take the State to Court” (PFS 2016); Suing the State for Independence (PFP182); PFP201 | David Dürr, From Divine Law to Papal Infallibility and Back Again (PFS 2018); PFP216 | David Dürr, Rights of Way – Ways out of the State (PFS 2019); PFP232 | David Dürr, A Short History of the Swiss Constitution (PFS 2021); “War and Peace – and the Law” [PFP248]; PFP261 | David Dürr, “Swiss Confederation 2023: The Last 25 Years Ahead” (PFS 2023); PFP277 | David Dürr, “If I woke up and found myself president elect of Argentina …” (PFS 2024). [↩]
18. Mises; Stephan Kinsella and Patrick Tinsley, “Causation and Aggression,” Q. J. Austrian Econ. 7, no. 4 (Winter 2004): 97-112, now chap. 8 of LFFS; “Plato and the Spell of the State”; Nuclear Weapons: Proliferation, Monopoly, or Disarmament?; “The Role of Subscription-Based Patrol and Restitution in the Future of Liberty” (with Gil Guillory; Alford Prize). [↩]
19. See suggestions in On the Role of Commentators and Codes and the Oracles of the Law and Roman Law and Hypothetical Cases, such as: modern treatises and encyclopedias such as Corpus Juris Secundum, American Jurisprudence 2d (AmJur), Halsbury’s Laws of England, Williston on Contracts, Prosser & Keeton on Torts, Corbin on Contracts, and so on; the American Law Institute’s (ALI) Restatements of the Law and local versions such as New York Jurisprudence, 2d, Texas Jurisprudence, 3d., California Jurisprudence 3d. Then there is the Uniform Commercial Code, or UCC, which clarified, streamlined, and codified common law principles but was then mostly enacted as statutes in the 50 US States, similar to the way civil codes codified Roman and European law and were enacted as statutes. Illustrative and influential modern civil codes include the French, German, Louisiana, Italian, and Greek civil codes. For international law, which is also useful for more general principles of law common to “civilized nations,” there is Brownlie’s Principles of Public International Law, Oppenheim’s International Law, Shaw’s International Law, and the ALI’s Restatement (Third) of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States. [↩]