Mises Search

Libertarians’ devotion to individual rights, and to laws in support of those rights, is unquestionable. Most of the laws favored by libertarians can be shown to be consistent with our individual rights — unlike the blatantly illegitimate laws advocated by socialists. Despite this, however, many libertarians overlook important procedural or

  Volume 2, No. 4 (Winter 1999)   The Structure of Liberty is an important new work by one of libertarianism’s most significant and thoughtful legal scholars.  Its primary substantive deficiency is its over-reliance on the  Hayekian  knowledge paradigm, but the work nonetheless arrives at the private -property norms that address the more relevant

  Volume 7, No. 4 (Winter 2004)   In the context of legal analysis, one important  praxeological  doctrine is the distinction between action and mere behavior. The difference between action and behavior boils down to intent. Action is an individual’s intentional intervention in the physical world, via certain selected means , with the purpose of

A correspondent recently wrote me with a few libertarian puzzles/conundra. An edited version is below: When are threats of aggression punishable by law? Just how immediate, credible and serious must a threat be if it is to be considered a law violation under the libertarian legal code? [Note: In The Ethics of Liberty , Rothbard said: “It is

I’ve noted before, in Objectivism and Federalism and other entries linked there, “how many libertarians and Objectivists simply seem unable to appreciate the virtues of our federalist system; and that this is rejected implicitly when libertarians use ‘the government’ to refer to both state and federal government”. We see this yet again in Clint

[ Editor’s note: The Mises Institute presents the “voluntaryist constitution” as a thought experiment, and is not presented here as an ideological or political ideal. ]  There have been a number of attempts to create the ideal constitution — one which enshrines liberty, autonomy, and property rights, while ensuring the highest degree of prosperity