In July 2002, I delivered three lectures at the wonderful Rothbard Graduate Seminar (original link) at the Mises Institute in Auburn (other lecturers included Walter Block, David Gordon, Hans Hoppe, Guido Hülsmann, Roderick Long, Ralph Raico, Joe Salerno, and Mark Thornton). It was truly a great week.
My three lectures were entitled: “Natural Law and Positive Law,” “Self Defense, Punishment, and Proportionality,” and “The Theory of Contracts.” Strangely, I didn’t even think to include a lecture on IP even though I had just published a lengthy article on this topic in the JLS. Apparently, even as recently as 2002, it was not clear yet how much visibility the IP issue would soon attain.
I believe the lectures were recorded, but the tapes have not yet been located, as far as I know. I intend to write further on some of these topics, but for now I have uploaded my fairly detailed and comprehensible notes for these lectures. (Subsequent to this talk, I did publish A Theory of Contracts: Binding Promises, Title Transfer, and Inalienability, Journal of Libertarian Studies 17:2 (Spring 2003); and, on the topic of punishment and rights, had previously published Punishment and Proportionality: The Estoppel Approach, 12:1 Journal of Libertarian Studies 51 (Spring 1996) and New Rationalist Directions in Libertarian Rights Theory, 12:2 Journal of Libertarian Studies (Fall 1996).)
