From StephanKinsella.com:
Using International Law to Protect Property Rights and International Investment
Among libertarians I am known most for my intellectual property (IP) and general libertarian theorizing, as in my books Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Papinian Press, 2023), Against Intellectual Property (Mises Institute, 2008) and other publications. In my libertarian writing and theorizing I have tried to blend my practical and theoretical legal knowledge (of IP law, oil & gas law, international law, Roman/Louisiana/civil law, and common law) with libertarian and Austrian economics scholarship and insights.
I viewed this “libertarian legal” writing as my hobby or avocation, although I devoted a lot of time to this research and writing, and in retirement it is what occupies much of my time and attention. In my vocation, 1 I also practiced law for over thirty years, initially in the fields of oil and gas and international law, then specializing in IP and patent law, and general commercial law as general counsel of a high-tech company.
In addition to my purely libertarian writing (my avocation) and my legal career (my vocation), I also did a good deal of publishing and scholarship on purely legal topics such as civil law, oil & gas law, and international law—e.g., International Investment, Political Risk, and Dispute Resolution, 2d ed. (Oxford University Press, 2020), Louisiana Civil Law Dictionary (Quid Pro Books, 2011) and many others. 2 Some of this I did for career purposes—to advance at law firms or to help land clients. This is so-called “business development” or “client development,” which is one way to succeed or make partner at law firms, to get clients, and so on. And some of it was done as a lucrative publishing side-business—e.g., editing multi-volume commercial law, international law, and IP law treatises for various publishers, often with co-editors or co-authors. 3 For this reason, unlike my libertarian writing, all of which I post online for free and under Creative Commons CC-BY or CC0 licenses, much of this work is paywalled, with the copyright held by mainstream publishers such as Oceana Publications or Oxford University Press.
In the end, most of this purely legal scholarship was done because of my interest in law and legal theory itself, e.g. on international law, oil & gas law, IP law, and so on. And as noted above, I attempted to use some of this knowledge to bolster my libertarian theory work. Inevitably, some of my purely legal scholarship was affected by my libertarian views, interests, and values. For example, in earlier writing for publications such as the Russian Oil & Gas Guide and others I provided advice to clients on how to use international law to protect their investments in developing countries from expropriation. 4 This was all shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the ABA and its “CEELI” (Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative) and related initiatives sought to held guide emerging economies such as in newly-freed Eastern Europe in reforming their law to protect property rights, the rule of law, and so on. 5 I was asked by ABA/CEELI to analyze various draft laws, such as those of Romania, Lithuania, Russia, and so on. 6
Some of this culminated in a long law review article, “Reducing Political Risk in Developing Countries: Bilateral Investment Treaties, Stabilization Clauses, and MIGA & OPIC Investment Insurance,” published in the New York Law School Journal of International and Comparative Law in 1994. 7 As I noted there,
