• Chapter 10 Appendix LeFevre's Pacifism
    Jan 2 2026

    As noted above, the material here was originally intended to appear

    in footnote 21, above. Due to its length, I include this material in this

    appendix.

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    4 min
  • Part 3 Chapter 10 Inalienability and Punishment: A Reply to George Smith
    Jan 2 2026

    George H. Smith published “A Killer’s Right to Life” in Liberty magazine in

    1996, making various arguments and claims about inalienability. I responded in

    the Journal of Libertarian Studies, in a piece which complements and supplements

    my previous articles on the inalienability and punishment issues, now

    chapters 5 and 9 in the present volume. Despite my disagreements with Smith

    on this issue, I respect and have learned from his work, such as his great essay

    “Justice Entrepreneurship in a Free Market.”

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    32 min
  • Part 3 Chapter 9 A Libertarian Theory of Contract: Title Transfer, Binding Promises, and Inalienability
    Dec 30 2025

    While in law school in Louisiana (the only civil law state in the US), I was

    introduced to the Roman and civil law and also to contract law and theory.

    It was during my first-year contracts class, in 1988, that I conceived of my

    “estoppel” based theory of rights. I also became interested in the Rothbard-Evers

    title-transfer theory of contract. I presented a paper on this topic in 1999,

    integrating the views of Rothbard and Evers with various concepts from the

    civil law and the common law. I later published an article on this in the

    Journal of Libertarian Studies, upon which this chapter is based.

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    1 ora e 11 min
  • Part 3 Chapter 8 Causation and Aggression
    Dec 29 2025

    In 2001, I presented a paper entitled “Reinach and the Property Libertarians

    on Causality in the Law” at a Mises Institute symposium on Adolf Reinach

    and Murray Rothbard. I later collaborated with Patrick Tinsley on an article

    based on this paper, published in 2004 in a related symposium issue in

    The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. This chapter is a substantially

    revised version of that article.

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    1 ora e 6 min
  • Part 2 Chapter 7 Defending Argumentation Ethics
    Dec 23 2025

    This chapter is based on an article originally published in 2002 on the

    now-defunct site Anti-state.com, as a response to an article by Robert

    P. Murphy and Gene Callahan (hereinafter, MC), on the same forum,

    which was critical of Hoppe’s argumentation ethics.

    Please consider a donation to the Mises Insistute, at https://mises.org/giving

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    55 min
  • Part 2 Chapter 6 Dialogical Arguments for Libertarian Rights
    Dec 22 2025

    After publishing articles on my estoppel-based theory of rights and

    Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s “argumentation ethics” defense of libertarian rights

    between 1992 and 1996, I published an article surveying estoppel, argumentation

    ethics, and similar theories in the Journal of Libertarian Studies in

    1996, entitled “New Rationalist Directions in Libertarian Rights Theory.”

    An updated version of this article was published as “Dialogical Arguments

    for Libertarian Rights” in The Dialectics of Liberty in 2019. This chapter is

    based on the latter piece, and is updated still further.

    Please consider giving to the Mises Institute at https://mises.org/giving

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    38 min
  • Chapter 5 Appendix The Justice Of Responsive Force
    Jan 17 2025

    In Part III.C above, I discussed the legitimacy of punishing aggressors, that is, the justice of responsive force—force that is in response to aggression, or initiated force. As noted above, the material here was originally intended to appear in footnote 44, above. Due to its length, I include this material in this appendix.

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    8 min
  • Part 2 Chapter 5 A Libertarian Theory of Punishment and Rights
    Jan 17 2025

    I published my first article on libertarian theory, “Estoppel: A New Justification for Individual Rights,” in Reason Papers in 1992.* An expanded treatment was published in the Journal of Libertarian Studies in 1996 and a similar version in the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review.† This chapter is based on the latter article, also incorporating some material from the JLS article. There I thanked “Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Jack Criss for helpful comments on an earlier draft.”

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    1 ora e 21 min