StephanKinsella.com

Q: Re page 424 at the top [“Against Intellectual Property After Twenty Years: Looking Back and Looking Forward,” in Legal Foundations of a Free Society], was the topic of exchanging a tangible for a service. This got me to thinking: how about service-only trades? I haven’t seen this covered, perhaps it falls outside libertarian legal framework.

How would we categorize an agreement whereby the parties exchange only their services (actions), AND make no provision for non-performance … therefore, no tangible resources are involved at all? An example: I’ll help set up for your party; you wash my car; and we don’t discuss what happens if one of us reneges. [continue reading…]

Q: Hi Mr. Kinsella,

Am I right in understanding that, based on your estoppel theory, [see chs. 5-6 of  Legal Foundations of a Free Society] it would NOT be a crime for A to say to B, “Give me $100 or I’ll punch C” (assuming C is unaware of this statement)? Because neither B nor C suffers any fear of receiving a battery. [continue reading…]

Interchange between me and Jessi Cowart on FB, starting here:

Jessi Cowart for LPTexas Vice Chair:

I’m a minarchist, and I reject the notion that this makes me any less libertarian than my brethren who identify as anarchists. This movement is about fighting the state. It’s not a pissing contest to see who’s more “hard core.”

Kinsella:

You are less libertarian. You’re partly libertarian and partly statist. A mini-statist.

Cowart:

Your purity test is tired. Anarchists who try to arbitrarily move the goal post on what it means to be libertarian – and call their allies statists – aren’t helping to advance liberty. [continue reading…]

My new book, Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023), is festooned with footnotes. One reason for this is I’m used to the style and requirements of law reviews and law journals. Every scholarly discipline has its citation format. I, for one, despise in-line citations [such as: (Block 2017a) ], and I also despise endnotes. I hate flipping back and forth to the end of the chapter or book, as I usually read footnotes or glance at them. I prefer a modified version of Chicago-style, and in footnote form, although, again, many people hate footnotes, as I noted previously:

I’ve always liked the following comments by Bryan Garner, in The Elements of Legal Style (page 93). Garner notes that although footnotes can usefully refer you to other references, “you can hardly ignore, at the foot of every page, the notes that ‘run along, like little angry dogs barking at the text.’ These days, the notes are more likely Great Danes than chihuahuas.” ¹

I don’t view them as annoying barking dogs; what is annoying are endnotes. In any case, my new book is littered with them. Some may hate them, but not everyone, apparently. From one reader:

In case you had any concerns about all the footnotes and Appendices, I for one am a fan. I read each one that has supplemental commentary. LFFS trivia: the first page of Part 1 has no footnotes. It’s not till page 79 we find another page absent footnotes. Love the meat on the bone!

Update: in my recent article The Problem with Intellectual Property, I have an extensive bibliography including over 80 references to my own writing—books, chapters, articles, blog posts. Now it is common to have multiple citations from the same year, e.g, Kinsella 2023a, 2023b, etc. But on occasion a reference is denoted by the full date, such as a blogpost. So you would think it’s more rare to have two references on the very same day that need the a, b treatment but I have a couple there: (April 23, 2025a) and (April 23, 2025b).

Related: Blog Posts as Footnotes–Webnotes

1. Quoting S.M. Crothers, “That History Should Be Readable,” in The Gentle Reader 172 (1903; repr. 1972). To Footnote or Not To Footnote. [↩]

This is a lightly edited interchange with a libertarian friend.

FRIEND:

Stephan,

I’ve read Robert Hessen’s In Defense of the Corporation and found it excellent. I found it interesting that he disagrees with the notion that corporations are distinct entities, separate from the voluntary association of individuals (shareholders, board, executive, etc.) that makes up the corporation. Also interesting is his careful and insightful description of corporate liability for tort, distinguishing intentional and unintentional/negligence cases, and pointing out that agents (such as board members, executives, etc.) do not escape liability for their actions, i.e. cannot hide behind the corporate veil (though he doesn’t use this term).

[I found Norman Barry’s article “The Theory of the Corporation” very good and clear, too, for the most part, though some of it is somewhat mangled. More on this later… ***.]

¹

However, some legal scholars, such as Frank van Dun, do not think that limited liability entities are compatible with a natural order. ²

[continue reading…]

1. I discuss and critique Van Dun’s criticism of my and Walter Block’s “libertarian legalism” in “A Tour Through Walter Block’s Oeuvre,” in Elvira Nica & Gheorghe H. Popescu, eds., A Passion for Justice: Essays in Honor of Walter Block (New York: Addleton Academic Publishers, forthcoming); see also Legal Foundations of a Free Society, pp. __, et pass. [↩]
2. Perhaps he had in mind Frank Van Dun, “Is the Corporation a Free-Market Institution?,” Ideas on Liberty (March 2003). van dun: also: “A note on Austro-libertarianism and the limited-liability corporation“;

   Hessen was also criticized in two articles by Piet-Hein van Eeghen, “The Corporation at Issue, Part I: The Clash of Classical Liberal Values and the Negative Consequences for Capitalist Practices,” J. Libertarian Stud. 19, no. 3 (Summer 2005): 49–70, and “The Corporation at Issue, Part II: A Critique of Robert Hessen’s In Defense of the Corporation and Proposed Conditions for Private Incorporation,” J. Libertarian Stud. 19, no. 3 (Fall 2005): 37–57.  [↩]

Related:

• biographical pieces on my publications page
• Alan D. Bergman, Adopting Liberty: The Stephan Kinsella Story (2025)
• Meeting Rothbard and Hoppe: John Randolph Club, 1994 (Oct. 16, 2023)

At the Mises Supporters Summit 2023 this past weekend, a group of us visited the archive room, which was fascinating. Tons of material from Mises, Rothbard, and others. Pat Barnett was there and we were reminiscing. I mentioned the first time I met her and others like Rothbard, Hoppe, Rockwell, and so on, was at the John Randolph Club meeting in late 1994, just a few months before Rothbard died. The meeting was in Crystal City, Virginia, Oct. 21-22, 1994. I have mentioned this in previous writing, e.g. “How I Became a Libertarian,” in LFFS, p. 8; see also “Faculty Spotlight Interview: Stephan Kinsella”; KOL302 | Human Action Podcast with Jeff Deist: Hoppe’s Democracy; The Genesis of Estoppel: My Libertarian Rights Theory; My Failed Libertarian Speaking Hiatus; Memories of Mises Institute and Other Events, 1988–2019.

Pat found a copy of the original program and gave it to me, which I append here: PDF.

I was also able to get Rothbard to sign my copy of Man, Economy, and State, during a long, private conversation with him.

My book Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023) has just been published. When I was mailing copies to some colleagues today, the UPS lady asked me how long it took me to write it. I said “about 30 years,” though in a sense, it is even longer than that. I’ve been studying libertarian ideas for over 40 years, and I wrote the articles in this book over the last 29 years. But a more accurate answer is: about a year. I’ve been working very hard on this for the last twelve months, and it’s gratifying, and a relief, to have it finally out.

For more details, see here.

One tidbit for the curious. Hoppe includes a sort of “Easter Egg” in his Foreword, when he ends with these words:

Henceforth, then, all essential studies in the philosophy of law and the field of legal theory will have to take full account of the theories and criticisms expounded by Kinsella.

This is a callback to Ludwig von Mises’s comments about his student/protege Murray Rothbard’s Man, Economy, and State. Mises’s comment, from his 1962 review in New Individualist Review, reads:  “Henceforth all essential studies in these branches of knowledge will have to take full account of the theories and criticisms expounded by Dr. Rothbard.”

As Mises was Rothbard’s mentor, so Rothbard was Hoppe’s mentor, and Hoppe was my mentor, more or less, hence the clever callback.

Libertarian Answer Man time again!

I was asked a question about voting for Javier Milei, the soi-disant anarcho-capitalist or libertarian running for President in Argentina. I can certainly say that of the few videos and statements I’ve seen from the guy, he seems amazing, compared to any politician I’ve ever heard of. Since he seems to be familiar with Austrian economics and Rothbardian anarcho-libertarianism, and a scholar to boot. ¹ I doubt he get much of his radical programme enacted if elected, but even if he could dollarize the economy and stop hyperinflation, that would be a huge plus. ² [continue reading…]

1. See his chapter “Capitalism, Socialism, and the Neoclassical Trap,” in David Howden & , eds., The Emergence of a Tradition: Essays in Honor of Jesús Huerta de Soto, Vol. II (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), which unfortunately has a prohibitive academic publisher price, but I hear rumors free copies can be found online. [↩]
2. For more on Milei, see Fernando Chiocca, “O grande triunfo da esquerda: uma direita socialista,” Instituto Rothbard (July 1, 2023); and Javier Milei, “El retiro de Bernanke y el futuro de los emergentes” (Sábado 3 de agosto, 2013). [↩]

The Supreme Court’s recent decisions preventing colleges from using affirmative action—Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard College)—are wrong and unconstitutional. It’s a shame libertarians are in favor of this and sound like conservatives repeating dumb lines like “it should be merit oriented.” As if it was ever about merit: ever heard of legacy admissions or athletic admissions? Sure, mediocre-IQ Obama got into Harvard (racial affirmative action); but similarly mediocre-IQ George Bush got into Yale (legacy). Lower IQ football players get in and get scholarships too. So what?

It’s not about merit, or not only about merit; never was. Look at Harvard’s own website:

John Adams graduates

John Adams, future U.S. president, graduates. Before 1773, the graduates of Harvard were arranged in a hierarchy not of merit but “according to the dignity of birth, or to the rank of [their] parents.” By this rather undemocratic standard, Adams graduated 14th in a class of 24.

They also ignore federalism (the FedGov has no business regulating state universities) and constitutional problems with using the 14th Amendment to strike down state laws/actions they frown upon. ¹ Libertarians sound like clueless rah rah patriotic type dumb conservatives who romanticize the past and pretend we should “return” to a merit based higher education system. Return? Sounds half-racist. I understand why Blacks sense hypocrisy when whites whine about racial preferences—when legacy admissions have been tantamount to racial preferences for whites for a looooong time.

[continue reading…]

1. See Libertarian Centralists; Incorporation and the Fourteenth Amendment: The 140 Year Old “Riddle”; other posts about libertarian centralism. [↩]

A libertarian colleague asked me something like this:

Some time ago, I recall you wrote a piece on property rights where you argued (I think) that the inability to pay on a credit transaction was not a fraud because of the doctrine of impossibility. (I’m clearly paraphrasing in hopes that you will recognize the piece to which I’m referring.) I can’t seem to find it. (Perhaps it’s in the JLS or some reply to Van Dun.) ¹

If you know the piece, could you direct me to it?

[continue reading…]

1. He is referring to “Reply to Van Dun: Non-Aggression and Title Transfer,” a revised version of which will appear in Legal Foundations of a Free Society (2023) [LFFS]. [↩]

[From my Webnote series]

• Classificationism, Legislation, Copyright

From this facebook post, referring to this Youtube video:

Also discussed at KOL361 | Libertarian Answer Man: Oaths: With Kent Wellington): Go to around 32 minutes; from the transcript: “Just like in the US, in the federal court system, all these guys that they call judges, the federal judges, the Supreme Court judges, they’re not really judges. They’re just state agents whose job is to interpret the words written down on paper by other state agents.  That’s it.  Their job is not to do justice, which is what a real judge does.  A real judge tries to resolve a dispute between two parties based upon principles of justness and fairness.  These federal judges can’t do that because their job is to interpret the Constitution and federal law, which are just positive enactments written down on paper by a bunch of elected bureaucrats and members of the state.  So I don’t think they’re actual judges.  They’re not actually doing law.  What they’re interpreting is not law. (See Another Problem with Legislation: James Carter v. the Field Codes)

See also:

Stephan Kinsella https://t.co/zAEsMd0ePq pic.twitter.com/TH7iKDwToB

— This Is Common Sense (@Common_Sense_PJ) August 22, 2024

[Update: see the following comment adapted from an email to my new friend Nadia Nedzel ¹ about related matters:

It’s a shame Hasnas’s small but important output is not easily accessible online, because I think his Myth piece could be improved by clarifying that his critique applies mostly to cases where the judge is interpreting artificial codes like statutes, legislation, and written constitutions (e.g. the US Constitution) and does not apply nearly so much to the normal judge in a true decentralized system whose mandate is to do justice (e.g. an arbitrator in a decentralized libertarian anarchist society, or even a judge or jurist or jurisconsult in a system like the Roman Law or English Common Law.

What is interesting for example is how Roman jurists apparently, to some extent, would develop the law not only by real cases, but by hypothetical ones: Roman Law and Hypothetical Cases; and chs. 13 & 19 of Stephan Kinsella, Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023), to-wit “Legislation and the Discovery of Law in a Free Society,” n. 147, and “Knowledge, Calculation, Conflict, and Law,” n.64. See also Hasnas: Common Law, Anarchy, etc.: Common Law Liberalism: A New Theory of the Libertarian Society and Two Great Arguments for Anarchy: Long and Hasnas]

[continue reading…]

1. Whom I met at a recent Louisiana civil code conference: The Louisiana Civil Code of 1825: Content, Influences and Languages; Past and Future: Returning to my Louisiana Roots. [↩]