Interesting article on Mises Wire: “A Tale of Two Legal Systems: Common Law and Statutory Laws,” by Ugo Stornaiolo S.:
It was the best of the laws, it was the worst of the laws, it was built on freedom, it was built on power, it was the spontaneous order of organic social institutions, it was the deliberate order of ideology and coercion, it was a stream of jurisprudence guiding us to justice, it was a tangle of statutes pushing us to restriction.
In short, law, either jurisprudence or legislation, can only be understood by comparison, and adapting the introduction of A Tale of Two Cities, we see two systems, common and civil law, and gaps in freedom between them.
He quotes my article “Legislation and Law in a Free Society.” See also the longer version, “Legislation and the Discovery of Law in a Free Society,” in Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023); and related comments from Hoppe, e.g. at n.152 of this chapter.
I recently had conversation with some fellow libertarians about how to interpret the governing rules of a given organization, and whether members of the group who receive information submitted to them are free to release this information publicly. I pointed out that the organization’s Bylaws don’t say we cannot release this information, to which someone else said it doesn’t say we can, either. I responded that the general rule is that we don’t live by permission; all that is not forbidden is permitted. In response, someone argued that this reasoning sounds like the excuse the state uses, for example when the US Government argues that its power is basically plenary, despite the enumerated powers structure of the Constitution and the Tenth Amendment, because of the interstate commerce clause in effect granting it broad legislative powers—an interpretation we libertarians usually criticize and reject. [continue reading…]
I’m attending what looks to be a fascinating legal conference next week, “The Louisiana Civil Code of 1825: Content, Influences and Languages; Past and Future,” LSU Law Center, March 20–21, 2025. 1 Somewhat to my surprise, I’m looking forward to it. Let me splain. (Note: I realize this post may come across as narcissistic or self-absorbed to some; I don’t care; in this case, it’s not for you. Some people are interested in this, others not. And one purpose of my blogging like this is to create posts that in effect can serve as searchable notes or “footnotes” for later use. 2 So avert thine eyes if you don’t like it…) [continue reading…]
I just came across some correspondence with Bryan Garner from 1993, who is by now a well known expert on legal writing, style, and related matters. (His books include his first book, A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage, and many others, such as Garner’s Modern English Usage, Black’s Law Dictionary, The Elements of Legal Style, etc.) I met Bryan when he conducted a legal writing seminar for new lawyers in my firm, Jackson Walker, in 1992, shortly after he founded is firm Lawprose. I corresponded with him a bit, in part about my upcoming article “A Civil Law to Common Law Dictionary,” La. L. Rev. 54 (1994), which I later turned into a book, Louisiana Civil Law Dictionary (2011).
When we met, I believe we discussed how there is redundancy in language, e.g., how you write on a check “$100” and “One hundred and no/100 dollars.” Some criticize this, but there is a reason for this redundancy. In my letter I noted: [continue reading…]
Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023) has been translated into Portuguese as Fundamentos Legais de uma Sociedade Livre (forthcoming 2025), by Rick Theu and VAP of the Instituto Hoppe (Brasil). The book has been divided into two voluments: Vol. 1 (Parts I–III; pdf) and Vol. 2 (Parts IV–VI; pdf).
According to the publisher (and as also noted in the Publishers note below), “there is still some revision to be done (some of the footnotes need to be corrected—some are referencing the wrong pages, some could reference the corresponding Portuguese edition of the works that have already been translated, etc.).” I will post updated files when received. I append below Hoppe’s Foreword and my Preface.
The Publisher’s note is included below. I wish to make one correction. They write “The work of translation is always thankless.” Not true: they have my gratitude and appreciation. 1 It is always a pleasure to encounter others with a passion to help spread the ideas of liberty. [continue reading…]
I am reminded of my correspondence with the late, great Dr. Petr Beckmann in the 1990s (see various posts here). I had proposed writing a treatment of some of his ideas on nuclear power and asked his permission; he replied that I had not only his permission but his gratitude. Also, as I pointed out to the translators here: my comment above was more jocular—just an excuse to express gratitude. As I pointed out to him, in my 1994 review of Hoppe, jokingly wrote this: “18. Hoppe dedicates the volume to Murray N. Rothbard, stating that ‘words cannot express my personal gratitude.’ Economics and Ethics xi. Of course (I point out in jest), by using words to express his personal gratitude Hoppe contradicts himself by stating that words cannot express his gratitude.” I was being cheeky. I removed this comment from the version in my book … ch. 22 of Legal Foundations of a Free Society. [↩]
The present paper argues that libertarians (e.g. Murray Rothbard, Stephan Kinsella) who subscribe to the proportionality principle while embracing the view that to have a right to property is to have a right to defend it run into what we call the Property Defense Dilemma. For if the only way to defend property is to defend it disproportionately, then a private property right—contrary to what these thinkers claim—is not accompanied by a right to defend it. The most plausible way out of the dilemma—the present paper argues—is to conceive of private property rights as only weakly absolute, to use Matthew H. Kramer’s illuminating distinction. On the other hand, libertarians who, like Walter Block, would like to escape the dilemma by replacing the proportionality standard with the gentleness principle run into other sorts of problems (moral implausibility, incoherence), which also shows that it is the libertarian view on rights as infinitely stringent side constraints that calls for revision and attenuation.
Stephan Kinsella’s Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023) is now available in a Chinese translation as 自由社会的法律根基 (Feb. 2025) (pdf) (previous draft mentioned here). The proofread text of the translation is also available below.
The book was translated by Li San (李三) of the Mises Translation and Compilation Society (米塞斯编译社译丛), a group dedicated to translating and editing the classic works of the Austrian School.
As the Society is not licensed to publish, I plan to publish paper and kindle versions of this with Papinian Press. Stay tuned.
There is apparently yet another new libertarianism-related book in the works: The Freedom Scale: An Accurate Measure of Left and Right, by one Christopher Cook, whom I have never heard of before (h/t Adam Haman). See:
But in the case of an attempted voluntary slavery contract, the promisor, by saying, “I promise to be your slave,” or “I give my body to you” does not commit an act of aggression. It does not create any victim who has a right to retaliate against him. So if the would-be slave decides to renege on his promise and run off, the would-be master has no right to use force to stop him. It is always current consent that matters. If a girl promises a kiss at the end of the date and the boyfriend an hour later kisses her, she cannot claim it was nonconsensual. In effect, she communicated her consent, she set up a standing presumption that is reasonable to rely on—until and unless she changes her mind. If at the end of the date she announces she no longer wants a kiss, it is that consent that matters. It is always the most recent consent that matters since this is the best evidence for what was consented to. There is nothing in libertarianism that says people cannot change their minds. To simply state that you can make an irrevocable, binding promise is just question-begging since it is just another way of sneaking in the assumption that our bodies are alienable, even though our rights to our body do not stem from homesteading or acquisition but rather from our direct control of them.
In discussing an article by Ron Johnson, The Government Says Money Isn’t Property—So It Can Take Yours, I mentioned that in previous writing 1 I had argued that just as bitcoin is not ownable, in today’s world of fiat money even dollars are not exactly ownable—but that I would not want to get the state to accept this argument at present time. A friend asked me: “what would follow if the courts accepted your premise? How could that affect intellectual property law?” [continue reading…]
I have been interested in Libertarianism for some time now and Hoppes AE has especially fascinated me.However,I have some questions which were left open.Hoppes central claim seems to be,that you cannot argue without accepting NAP and self -ownership .
Not exactly. It is that all truth claims must be established in argumentation, including claims about what norms or conduct is justifiable. Also, that the activity argumentative justification necessarily presupposes certain norms or values, such as peace, universalizability, non-contradiction, truth, the ability to homestead unowned resources, the ability to control one’s own body, the value of avoiding conflict, and so on; and that these norms–which we may think of as “grundnorms”–cannot be denied without contradiction since they are inevitably presupposed by every participant in argumentative justification; and finally, that any political norm other than libertarianism (that is, all forms of socialism) are incompatible with these grundnorms and thus cannot be argumentatively justified. It is essentially a proof by contradiction: that any non-libertarian political norm contradicts more basic norms that are necessarily presupposed by all participants in argumentation. Socialism is aggression and violence and contradicts the norms presupposed by the participants by virtue of participating in the peaceful activity of argumentation. [continue reading…]
In my book Stephan Kinsella, Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023), ch. 5, p. 73, n.23, I provide a quote, “What you do speaks so loud I can’t hear what you are saying.” which I took from an article by Clarence Carson. Carson calls it an “old saw” but provides no attribution.
I have realized this is a version of a quote widely attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson. According many sources on the Internet, the original quote is “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.” Emmet Fox, in The Sermon on the Mount: The Key to Success in Life (HarperOne, Reissue ed., 2009), provides a subtly different version, also attributed to Emerson: “What you areshoutsso loudly that I cannot hear what you say.”
I found it curious that none of the sources attributing this to Emerson provide a citation. I was unable to find this exact quote anywhere in Emerson’s work. With the help of people on Twitter, I finally came across this: “What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary,” from this paragraph:
Let nature bear the expense. The attitude, the tone, is all. Let our eyes not look away, but meet. Let us not look east and west for materials of conversation, but rest in presence and unity. A just feeling will fast enough supply fuel for discourse, if speaking be more grateful than silence. When people come to see us, we foolishly prattle, lest we be inhospitable. But things said for conversation are chalk eggs. Don’t say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. A lady of my acquaintance said, “I don’t care so much for what they say as I do for what makes them say it.
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