Related:

• KOL250 | International Law Through a Libertarian Lens (PFS 2018)
• Using International Law to Protect Property Rights and International Investment
• Rubins, Papanastasiou, Kinsella, International Investment, Political Risk, and Dispute Resolution, 2d ed. (Oxford University Press, 2020)
• On the UN, the Birchers, and International Law
• Neocons Hate International Law
• The UN, International Law, and Nuclear Weapons
• Nukes and International Law
• Related discussion in my Facebook post; also this Facebook post
• This Twitter interchange
• Sebastian Wang, “Power Without Justice: The American Government and the Corruption of Moral Reason,” Libertarian Alliance [UK] (7 January, 2026)
• Alan Bickley, The Nature of International Law: Response to Kinsella, Libertarian Alliance (UK) (17 January, 2026)

International Law, Libertarian Principles, and the Russia-Ukraine War

[Update: See also Murray Rothbard, “Just War,” in John Denson, ed., The Costs of War:

Much of “classical international law” theory, developed by the Catholic Scholastics, notably the 16th-century Spanish Scholastics such as Vitoria and Suarez, and then the Dutch Protestant Scholastic Grotius and by 18th- and 19th-century jurists, was an explanation of the criteria for a just war. For war, as a grave act of killing, needs to be justified.

… Classical international law … should be brought back as quickly as possible.

Update:

In response to the simpleminded but common comment and legal positivistic sentiment that international law is not real or that international law does not exist, because there is no sovereign state and enforceable legislation (see, e.g., Ben Shapiro here at 10:30 or so; Konstantin Kisin here at 47:20 or so

All the bleating about “international law” shows just how completely deluded some of our elites have become.

International law was a pleasant fiction that lasted for a few decades. It was never real and now the world has reverted to its default setting: Great Power politics.…

— Konstantin Kisin (@KonstantinKisin) January 4, 2026

), see, inter alia, Anthony D’Amato, “What ‘Counts’ as Law?,” in Law-Making in the Global Communkty, Nicholas G. Onuf, ed. (1982), Northwestern Public Law Research Paper No. 11-02, and many other treatises and papers. Also Is international law real? Professor José Alvarez weighs in (“almost all 0:18 states comply with almost all international law almost all the time. 0:22 Most people focused on the almost, but the fact is that they do comply it’s 0:28 just not front page news when they do”); International Law Explained | Kal Raustiala | Big Think; Philip Allott – The True Nature of International Law. ¹

Update: In a recent Human Action Podcast, Bob Murphy and Peter Klein have an illuminating discussion about international law, in Dr. Peter Klein on International Law and “Might Makes Right”. A relief to have some fellow libertarians support the concept of international law, as I get some pushback when I support it, as here and elsewhere, ² e.g. from Bircher and anti-UN types who identify international law with the UN and its globalist and somewhat leftist agenda. Or from legal positivists and brutalists and might-makes right thuggocrats and postlibertarians.

A few comments. First, Klein is right to distinguish different senses of the concept law, as I also discuss other talks. ³ Another distinction that can be made is normative versus descriptive laws, e.g. which comes into play regarding positive law vs. just law. ⁴ Understanding these distinctions is critical when economic analysis presupposes legal rights and concepts. ⁵

And those who say that international law is not real law because there is no sovereign also miss the point made by Cuzán, that even within a state, various actors have to count on voluntary compliance by others. ⁶ This is implicitly recognized by the concept of international law which requires recognition and consent of other nations to “enforce” international law. Klein mentions that even the US is not the world policeman since other nations, like Russia, don’t obey it.

But a deeper point is that even if there was a one-world government, such as that depicted in Orwell’s 1984, this does not imply that law makes sense only if there is a sovereign like this, for a few reasons. First, no law is perfectly enforced. Even prisons cannot stop drugs, crimes. Not all murders are caught, not all tax evasion is stopped. So a law can be a law even if it’s not always enforced. Same with international law. Second, as Cuzán notes, even inside the state–even inside a one-world state–actors are in a state of anarchy with respect to each other. Third, even the MAGA and might-makes-right and thuggocrat and “only results matter” postlibertarian types who for example talk about Trump buying Greenland implicitly presuppose international law; for what does it mean for one state (the US) to “buy” territory from another (Denmark): to have a binding treaty, or contract of sale—which presupposes the international law rule pacta sunt servanda.

Murphy and Callahan slightly mangle the description of how judges in the common law develop law; it true that that they do not “make” law as legislators do, but it is not really “codification” as they describe it. Codification refers to legal experts assembling, organizing, streamlining, legal principles developed by a decentralized legal system such as the English common law, or the Roman law—and usually in legislated form, such as the European civil codes. What judges do is develop and advance the law by applying general and fundamental legal principles, and previous precedents, to novel cases, so that the law grows organically over time.  ⁷ And though Murphy and Klein recognize the Law Merchant and common law and international law as examples of a non-legislated order, they omit the important example of Roman Law, perhaps because of a misconception that its modern instantiation, European civil law, is legal positivistic. That is not quite true, but in any case, both the Roman and common law are good examples of how law can develop organically. ⁸

I did find it somewhat amusing that Murphy spoke of a international law, a normative concept, in terms of “facts,” e.g. at 46:00:

just because the UN is impotent or filled with a bunch of hypocrites doesn’t mean therefore the US can do whatever it wants as long as we you know our officials think it’s in the interest of the United States government and that there’s, you know, that it doesn’t even make sense to say, is there a fact of the matter that what we just did was illegal besides merely being perhaps imprudent.

Related tweet:

@petergklein and @BobMurphyEcon have an excellent discussion about international law here https://t.co/eR5DyngWHh. I’ve been feeling isolated defending international law from the legal positivists e.g. Ben Shapiro, Konstantin Kisin, even some libertarians who associate it with…

— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) January 16, 2026

And in this regard, see also my comments in Using International Law to Protect Property Rights and International Investment about the hostility of some libertarians to my pro-international law views, and my updated comments there about Rothbard’s comments on classic international law.

***

In this tweet, I respond to Elon Musk’s promoted tweet where Jeffrey “Sachs” explains “How the US Provoked the Invasion of Ukraine.”

From my tweet:

“This is not how international law works. There was no binding international obligation at all from these “promises.” Russia and other states are akin to “sophisticated parties” in large business deals; there are rules for what constitutes a binding treaty under pacta sunt servanda, for what gives rise to an actual binding legal obligation under international law. For example, like Russia’s agreeing to Ukraine’s borders after the USSR fell, and like the USSR’s accession to the UN Charter which makes it illegal to invade another sovereign state. See my article “International Law, Libertarian Principles, and the Russia-Ukraine War” https://stephankinsella.com/2022/04/international-law-libertarian-principles-and-the-russia-ukraine-war/…. Expanding NATO is not a threat to Russia. Even if they pretend to perceive it that way, which I doubt they actually do. They are mostly upset at being treated like the thuggish threat they are and having their expansionist and imperialist ambitions thwarted. That said, am not saying NATO should have expanded and provoked thuggish, irrational Russia; I think NATO should have been disbanded. But let’s not pretend Russia has a valid excuse here. Still, a reasonable solution ought to be reached by negotiation. The US should stand ready to remove all financial support for Ukraine, agree to take Ukraine membership in NATO off the table for X years, get Russia to agree to a neutral zone for the contested territories, agree not to put NATO missiles etc. inside Ukraine, have Russia agree to Ukraine’s attempt to join the EU, and revive the old cooperation between Russia and NATO to reduce tensions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro-Atlantic_Partnership_Council…). The US and its allies could also agree to ease various sanctions on Russia. This could be a win-win for everyone including the mixed populations in Crimea etc.“

1. See also Sebastian Wang, “Power Without Justice: The American Government and the Corruption of Moral Reason,” Libertarian Alliance [UK] (7 January, 2026).[↩]
2. “Using International Law to Protect Property Rights and International Investment,” Libertarian Alliance (UK) (6 Dec. 2025); KOL250 | International Law Through a Libertarian Lens (PFS 2018). [↩]
3. See, e.g., KOL474 | Where The Common Law Goes Wrong (PFS 2025); also KOL001 | “The (State’s) Corruption of (Private) Law” (PFS 2012); KOL359 | State Constitutions vs. the Libertarian Private Law Code (PFS 2021); Examples of Libertarian Law vs. Louisiana vs. French vs. Common Law: Consideration and Formalities; Legislative Positivism and Rationalism in the Louisiana and French Civil Codes; KOL129 | Guest Lecture to Montessori Students: “The Story of Law: What Is Law, and Where Does it Come From?” [↩]
4.  On Property Rights in Superabundant Bananas and Property Rights as Normative Support for Possession; On “Unowned” State Property, Legal Positivism, Ownership vs. Possession, Immigration, Public Roads, and the Bum in the Library; Logical and Legal Positivism. See also Legal Positivists Are Natural Lawyers; Natural Law, Positive Law, Tax Evasion, Rituals and Incantations. [↩]
5. Disentangling Legal and Economic Concepts. [↩]
6. Alfred G. Cuzán, “Do We Ever Really Get Out of Anarchy?,” J. Libertarian Stud. 3, no. 2 (Summer 1979): 151–58; idem, “Revisiting ‘Do We Ever Really Get Out of Anarchy?’”, J. Libertarian Stud. 22, no. 1 (2010): 3–21. [↩]
7. Stephan Kinsella, “Legislation and the Discovery of Law in a Free Society,” in Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023); On the Role of Commentators and Codes and the Oracles of the Law; Examples of Libertarian Law vs. Louisiana vs. French vs. Common Law: Consideration and Formalities; Roman Law and Hypothetical Cases;  Epstein on Roman Law; The Superiority of the Roman Law: Scarcity, Property, Locke and Libertarianism; “Corpore Corpori”: “To the body”: Torts in the Roman Law. [↩]
8. See also the fallacious notion some hold about the civil law in “All that is not permitted is forbidden”. [↩]