Part 3 Chapter 9 A Libertarian Theory of Contract: Title Transfer, Binding Promises, and Inalienability

While in law school in Louisiana (the only civil law state in the US), I wasintroduced to the Roman and civil law and also to contract law and theory.It was during my first-year contracts class, in 1988, that I conceived of my“estoppel” based theory of rights. I also became interested in the Rothbard-Everstitle-transfer theory of contract. I presented a paper on this topic in 1999,integrating the views of Rothbard and Evers with various concepts from thecivil law and the common law. I later published an article on this in theJournal of Libertarian Studies, upon which this chapter is based.