The Fundamental Principles of Justice

The following served as a basis for the drafting of The Universal Principles of Liberty.

Fundamental Principles of Justice

Declaration of Adoption of Principles of Justice

Version 1.0

July 31, 2025

I hereby adopt and agree to/endorse/accept the Fundamental Principles of Justice, v. 1.0 (Date; link), and to the Supplemental Principles of Justice, v. 1.0 (Date; link), and to the legitimacy of any laws and legal system based thereon.

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Signature

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Date

Witness or Notary (optional)

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Fundamental Principles of Justice

July 31, 2025

By Stephan Kinsella

“Justice is the constant and perpetual wish to render every one his due.… The maxims of law are these: to live honestly, to hurt no one, to give every one his due.” —Justinian

I. Preliminary

A. Name. These Fundamental Principles of Justice may be referred to as the Principles.

B. Adoption. The Principles may be adopted by any person by any suitable means indicating agreement with and consent to laws consistent with this Principles, such as a Declaration of Adoption of Principles of Justice. Anyone adopting the Principles may be referred to as an Adopter.

C. Comments. Any comments to or on the Principles, including any footnotes or endnotes, do not constitute or form an official part of the Principles.

D. Purpose. The purpose of these Principles is, in general, to permit conflict free interaction by persons in society in the use of resources and, in particular, to support and aid in the establishment and maintenance of justice in a free society by setting forth the principles to which any legal system aspiring to be just must conform. Laws incompatible with these Principles are unjust. Persons include, but are not necessarily limited to, adult human human beings having the capacity to act. Society includes any community of persons, in a given territory or otherwise, to which these Principles and laws consistent with them apply.

II. Definitions and Assumptions

A. Action, Society, and the World. Society consists of persons who act in the world by employing conflictable resources that serve as causally efficacious means of action to achieve certain ends desired by the person. Conflictable resources are those resources over which conflict between persons is possible due to the nature of the resources. Conflictable resources include human bodies.

B. Persons. Persons include human beings that have the capacity to have rights and to respect, or violate, the rights of other Persons. Action that violates other Persons’ rights is unjust.

C. Rights. Rights are rights of persons to the exclusive control of conflictable resources, determined in accordance with just property assignment rules. The right of exclusive control of a resource, or ownership, means the right of the owner, or his agents, to exclude or prevent others from using the resource without the owner’s consent. All rights just are property rights.

D. Laws. Rights are protected by legally enforceable laws in a given community or society. Laws that protect property rights based on just property assignment rules are just; all other laws are unjust.

III. Preliminary Concepts

A. Rights Infringement. Rights are violated by action, when one person, who may be referred ot as the trespasser, uses, invades, or otherwise alters the physical integrity of a resource owned by another person, the victim, without the victim’s consent. The act of trespass or invasion involves causally efficacious means which may include the trespasser’s own body or other causally efficacious means.

B. Consent. Consent to use an owner’s resource may be granted by a sufficient communication thereof, taking context, language, and custom into account. The most recent communication of consent is generally presumed to have relevance and priority over prior communications.

C. Aggression and Trespass. Nonconsensual use of another’s owned resource, including his corporeal body, may be referred to as trespass, invasion, rights violation, or rights infringement. The trespass against or invasion of another’s body without his consent is a special type of trespass which may also be referred to as aggression.

IV. Property Assignment Rules: General

A. Self-Ownership. Each person is the presumptive owner of his or her own body (self-ownership), which property right may be forfeited only as a consequence of committing an act of aggression. Self-ownership rights are otherwise inalienable.

B. External Resources. Property rights in previously-unowned, non-bodily resources, or alienable resources, are determined in accordance with the following principles.

1. Unowned Resources. An unowned resource becomes owned by original appropriation, which may be determined by sufficient acts of occupation, first use and transformation, or embordering. Ownership is distinct from possession and is accompanied by the intent to own. A person owns such a resource until it is lost or destroyed, abandoned, contractually transferred to another person, or forfeited for purposes of rectification.
2. Contract. The owner of a such a resource may transfer ownership (title) to the resource to another person by indicating consent to the transfer, wherepon the recipient becomes the owner. These contractual title transfers may be unconditional or conditional, bilateral or unilateral, temporary or permanent, partial or complete, and gratuitous or onerous. Future title transfers are always conditional as the future is uncertain.
3. Rectification. Title to resources owned by the trespasser may be transferred to the victim of an act of trespass for purposes of rectification and compensation.

V. Select Unjust Laws

Selected positive laws that have been enforced in previous legal systems but which are unjust and incompatible with these Principles are listed below out of an abundance of caution and as an aid to interpret the application of these Principles to other laws not so listed. No law incompatible with the Principles is just or may be justly enforced, even if not listed below. The listing of unjust laws here shall not be construed to imply that other laws incompatible with these Principles are not also unjust. Laws or legal rules that are regarded as unjust under these Principles include:

[To be enumerated]

VI. Conflict Avoidance, Dispute Resolution and Law

A. Conflict-Avoidance. Persons adopting these Principles recognize the importance of avoiding conflict in the use of resources in society, of respecting others’ rights, of abiding by law consistent with these Principles, of being willing to negotiate in good faith and compromise with other persons in the interest of avoiding conflict, and of submitting disputes to neutral dispute resolution fora, such as courts or arbitration, when feasible.

B. Courts and Law.

1. Courts and Dispute Resolution. Dispute resolution fora, which may include courts of law, arbitration, or other informal dispute resolution systems, which may be referred to generally as courts, must attempt to do justice in a given case in accordance with the Principles and with a laws compatible with the Principles. The parties must agree to abide by the final results of the legal process in the interest of peace and conflict avoidance.
2. Secondary Sources of Law. When the outcome of a dispute before the court is not clearly determined by the Principles, the court may refer to secondary sources of law in making its determination, which may include, in the court’s discretion: existing bodies of private law, such as the Roman law, Anglo-American common law, and modern civil law systems, and codifications and restatements thereof, as in the European and other civil codes and the ALI Restatements of the Law, insofar as these laws or bodies of law are not inconsistent with these Principles; with the writings of learned scholars and legal experts, especially libertarian thinkers; and with private codifications of developed law based on and compatible with these Principles or supplementary applications or extension of these Principles by learned scholars that are compatible with and that supplement these Principles and/or other bodies of private law.
3. Principles and Precepts. In a given community or free society that has adopted these Principles, laws, including concrete laws and legal precepts applying and compatible with the Principles, may be developed over time that are in generally recognized and force in the community. These laws and these Principles constitute the legal system the community.