Stephan Kinsella
From Wikinfo
Norman (N.) Stephan Kinsella (born 1965) is an American intellectual property lawyer and libertarian legal theorist.
Biography
Born in Prairieville, Louisiana, he attended Louisiana State University where he earned Master of Science (MS) and Bachelor of Science (BS) degrees in electrical engineering, and a Juris Doctor (JD) from the Paul M. Hebert Law Center [1]; and obtained an LL.M. at the University of London, where he attended King's College London and the London School of Economics.
A practicing lawyer and former adjunct professor of law at South Texas College of Law [2], Kinsella is actively involved with libertarian legal and political theory, and is adjunct sholar of the Mises Institute [3].
Legal publications include books and articles [4] about patent law, contract law, e-commerce law, international law and other topics.
Kinsella has also published and lectured on a variety of libertarian topics, often combining libertarian and legal analysis. Kinsella's views on contract theory, causation and the law, intellectual property, and rights theory (in particular his estoppel theory) are his main contributions to libertarian theory.
In contract theory, he extends Murray Rothbard's [5] and Williamson Evers's [6] "title transfer" theory of contract, linking it with inalienabiltiy theory while also clarifying that theory ("A Libertarian Theory of Contract: Binding Promises, Title Transfer, and Inalienability" [7]). Kinsella sets forth a theory of causation that attempts to explain why remote actors can be liable under libertarian theory ("Causation and Aggression" [8]). Kinsella, as a practicing intellectual property attorney, also gives non-utilitarian arguments for intellectual property being incompatible with libertarian property rights principles ("Against Intellectual Property" [9]). Kinsella advances a "discourse ethics" argument for the justification of individual rights, using an extension of the concept of estoppel (A Libertarian Theory of Punishment and Rights).
External links
- KinsellaLaw, Stephan Kinsella's legal website
- StephanKinsella.com, Stephan Kinsella's libertarian website
References
- Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "Stephan_Kinsella" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephan_Kinsella, used under the GNU Free Documentation License
