Kinsella on Private Law and the Universal Principles of Liberty: World Liberty Summit 2026–Bolivia

My talk on private law and the Universal Principles of Liberty at the Tenth Annual World Liberty Summit in La Paz, Bolivia, is now available as episode 506 of the Kinsella on Liberty Podcast.

From Stephan Kinsella, “KOL506 | Private Law and the Universal Principles of Liberty: World Liberty Summit 2026–Bolivia,” Kinsella on Liberty Podcast (Nov. 12, 2026):

As noted in Kinsella Lecturing at World Liberty Summit 2026–Bolivia: “Conflict between AI and Copyright” and “Private law and the Universal Principles of Liberty”, I am participating in this event:

The Tenth Annual World Liberty Summit 2026 (Nov. 10 and 11, 2026), organized by the think tank Sociedad de la Libertad (SDL Latam, @SDLPeru), based in Lima, Peru. This year’s Summit will be held in La Paz, Bolivia. The general theme is the future of anarcho-capitalism and the State in the 21st century.

Last night (Nov. 11, 2026) I spoke on “Private Law and the Universal Principles of Liberty.” My speech (including Spanish translation) is below.

The previous night, I spoke on “The Conflict Between AI and Copyright”: KOL505 | The Conflict Between AI and Copyright: World Liberty Summit 2026–Bolivia. My previous SDL Latam (Peru) talk was KOL495 | “Rothbard’s Revolutionary Contract Theory,” Sociedad de la Libertad Latam (Peru): Rothbard 100: A Legacy for Future Generations.

Read more>>

Related

• The Universal Principles of Liberty
  • “The Universal Principles of Liberty,” StephanKinsella.com (Aug. 14, 2025) (the text of the Principles discussed in the talk)
  • “The Universal Principles of Liberty: Supplemental Principles,” StephanKinsella.com (Sept. 7, 2025) (supplemental essays applying the Principles to threats, fraud, hypothetical cases, and other issues)
  • “Announcing the Universal Principles of Liberty,” PFS (Aug. 18, 2025) (the public announcement of the Principles)
  • “Aggression and Property Rights Plank in the Libertarian Party Platform,” StephanKinsella.com (May 30, 2022) (the statement of principles I drafted that the US Libertarian Party adopted as Plank 2.1 in 2022)
  • “Fusillo on the Universal Principles of Liberty and Liberland,” PFS (Oct. 2, 2025) (Alessandro Fusillo on the Principles and the Liberland project)
• Podcasts
  • KOL480 | The Liberland Constitution and Libertarian Principles (Liberland Prague, 2025) (Dec. 21, 2025) (why written constitutions are problematic, and incorporating the Principles into the Liberland Constitution)
  • KOL473 | The Universal Principles of Liberty, with Mark Maresca of The White Pillbox (Sept. 6, 2025) (how the Principles distill libertarian private-law principles into a statement free communities can adopt)
  • KOL478 | Haman Nature Hn 185: The Universal Principles of Liberty (Dec. 9, 2025) (the Principles as a base layer that private legal systems can voluntarily adopt)
  • KOL496 | Matt Sands and Kinsella on the Universal Principles of Liberty and the Nations of Sanity “Peace Agreement” (Aug. 15, 2026) (applying the Principles in practice: gray areas, jurisdiction, and standards of proof)
• Law, legislation, and armchair theorizing
  • “On the Role of Commentators and Codes and the Oracles of the Law,” StephanKinsella.com (July 31, 2025) (why a decentralized legal order needs scholarly commentary and private codes, like those of Coke and Blackstone)
  • “Roman Law and Hypothetical Cases,” StephanKinsella.com (Dec. 19, 2022) (law should develop through real disputes; includes the flagpole hypothetical)
  • Juan I. Núñez, “Flagpole Libertarianism: A Refutation of the Suicide Pact,” StephanKinsella.com (Sept. 29, 2025) (against rigid readings of libertarian ethics tested by absurd hypotheticals)
  • “On the Non Liquet in Libertarian Theory and Armchair Theorizing,” StephanKinsella.com (July 20, 2025) (some questions cannot be settled from the armchair and must be worked out in real disputes)
  • “The Limits of Armchair Theorizing: The Case of Threats,” StephanKinsella.com (July 27, 2006) (abstract principles cannot settle concrete questions without context, custom, and adjudication)
  • “Legislative Positivism and Rationalism in the Louisiana and French Civil Codes,” StephanKinsella.com (Apr. 6, 2023) (the legislative positivism of the Code Napoleon, compared with the Louisiana Civil Code)
  • “Libertarian Answer Man: Does It Matter How Law is Made?,” StephanKinsella.com (Oct. 19, 2021) (why a state is unacceptable even if its laws respect the non-aggression principle)
  • “Areas That Need Development from Libertarian Thinkers,” StephanKinsella.com (Jan. 18, 2022) (neglected areas of libertarian legal theory)
• Rights, property, and action
  • “On Property Rights in Superabundant Bananas and Property Rights as Normative Support for Possession,” StephanKinsella.com (Apr. 19, 2025) (property rights as normative support for possession of scarce, conflictable means)
  • “Rights as Metanorms; Rights and Morals as Intersecting Sets Not as Subset of Morals,” StephanKinsella.com (June 2, 2025) (rights as metanorms that tell us which laws are just)
  • “Human Action and Universe Creation,” StephanKinsella.com (June 28, 2022) (action aims at a preferred future state of affairs, which makes conflict over scarce means, and thus property rights, inevitable)
  • Kinsella, “Mises, Rothbard, Hoppe: An Indispensable Framework,” in Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment (Papinian Press & The Saif House, 2026) (the Mises-Rothbard-Hoppe framework the Principles build on)
• Kinsella, Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston: Papinian Press, 2023) (LFFS)
  • ch. 2, “What Libertarianism Is” (aggression defined in terms of property rights: self-ownership, original appropriation, and contractual transfer)
  • ch. 3, “What It Means To Be an Anarcho-Capitalist” (why the state, however limited, is a criminal organization)
  • ch. 4, “How We Come To Own Ourselves” (the basis of self-ownership)
  • ch. 9, “A Libertarian Theory of Contract: Title Transfer, Binding Promises, and Inalienability” (contract as the transfer of title to owned resources)
  • ch. 13, “Legislation and the Discovery of Law in a Free Society” (Leoni, Hayek, and why decentralized, court-found law beats legislation)
  • ch. 19, “Knowledge, Calculation, Conflict, and Law” (my review of Randy Barnett’s The Structure of Liberty, on law and justice in a decentralized legal order)