libertarianism

My paper How We Come To Own Ourselves, Mises Daily (Sep. 7, 2006; Mises.org blog discussion) has been nicely narrated, with helpful but unobtrusive slides, by Graham Wright.

Back in 2008 I pointed out some problems with resorting to the courts of the central state to vindicate our rights, in the context of the Heller gun rights case. I argued that the Bill of Rights limits the power of the federal government. It was certainly not meant not empower the federal government via […]

Below is a lightly edited text version of “Taking the Ninth Amendment Seriously: A Review of Calvin R. Massey’s Silent Rights: The Ninth Amendment and the Constitution’s Unenumerated Rights [1995],” vol. 24 Hastings Const. L. Q. 757 (1997).   Taking the Ninth Amendment Seriously: Review of Calvin R. Massey, Silent Rights: The Ninth Amendment and the Constitution’s […]

Great passage that I’ve always liked from Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s The Economics and Ethics of Private Property, p. 417-18: In fact, what strikes Conway as a counterintuitive implication of the homesteading ethic, and then leads him to reject it, can easily be interpreted quite differently. It is true, as Conway says, that this ethic would allow […]

From The Meaning of Morality. As I write in an upcoming paper (“The Ethical Case Against Intellectual Property,” Griffith Law Review, Symposium on Law and Anarchy: Legal Order and the Idea of a Stateless Society (Symposium Editor, Gary Chartier; forthcoming 2012)) [update: this article was withdrawn from this symposium due to a disagreement with the […]

I recently emailed a question to the Mises email list. The subject line: “Legal foundations and presuppositions of economic analysis.” An edited version: I am looking for economic articles or textbooks that explicitly discuss the legal assumptions that economic analysis rests on. For example economists take for granted certain legal institutional features and concepts such […]

I noted in “What Libertarianism Is” (n.1): The term “private” property rights is sometimes used by libertarians, which I have always found odd, since property rights are necessarily public, not private, in the sense that the borders or boundaries of property must be publicly visible so that nonowners can avoid trespass. For more on this […]

The 3rd Adam Smith Forum is being held Nov. 12, 2011 in Moscow. This is an impressive event, organized by the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom, the Libertarian Party of Russia, and others. The Chairman of the ASF Steering Committee is economist Pavel Usanov, head of the Hayek Institute for Economy and Law; Andrey […]

Jeff Tucker and Tom Woods had excellent criticisms of The Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace released a document Monday, calling for a world economic authority and condemning the “idolatry of the market.” But were I still a devout Catholic, of the opinion that the Church was infallible when speaking through its pope ex […]

Interesting recent case: Man Tracks Down Classic Camaro Stolen 16 Years Ago: Edward Neely of Jefferson, Mo. has his baby back. Or at least his stolen 1969 Camaro. Nicknamed “Chelsey Pearl,” Neely purchased the car when he was 18. In 1995, the car was stolen, and hadn’t been seen since. That is, until he spotted […]