KOL146 | Interview of Williamson Evers on the Title-Transfer Theory of Contract

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 146. Update: See also Thoughts on Walter Block on Voluntary Slavery, Alienability vs. Inalienability, Property and Contract, Rothbard and Evers (Jan. 9, 2022). Transcript below. See also KOL197 | Tom Woods Show: The Central Rothbard Contribution I Overlooked, and Why It Matters: The Rothbard-Evers Title-Transfer Theory of Contract. Today I had a discussion with Williamson Evers, about his pathbreaking 1977 article Toward a Reformulation of the Law of Contracts, which was the first article ever published in the Journal of Libertarian Studies (Evers's other JLS articles). This article was relied on heavily by Rothbard, in ch. 19 of The Ethics of Liberty, "Property Rights and the Theory of Contracts." I discuss this piece in detail in my 2003 JLS article "A Libertarian Theory of Contract: Title Transfer, Binding Promises, and Inalienability" (now in Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023)), and I also discuss it in my post Justice and Property Rights: Rothbard on Scarcity, Property, Contracts…. See also my post Thoughts on Walter Block on Voluntary Slavery, Alienability vs. Inalienability, Property and Contract, Rothbard and Evers. A fascinating interview. We discussed the genesis of this important theory and related matters. I appreciate greatly Dr. Evers taking time to discuss this matter with me. Note: The purpose of talking to Evers was to ask him questions about his own theory of contract. I sent him a copy of my article as a way to persuade him to talk with me, but my purpose was not to discuss my article with him. However, Evers seemed to think this was the reason for my call and he kept bringing the topic back to my article, when I really wanted to discuss his. In any event, as he was my guest, I did not try too hard to change the topic, and did end up getting a great deal of useful information from him about his original paper and the origin of these ideas. Related links: KOL225 | Reflections on the Theory of Contract (PFS 2017) KOL197 | Tom Woods Show: The Central Rothbard Contribution I Overlooked, and Why It Matters: The Rothbard-Evers Title-Transfer Theory of Contract KOL 029 | First Degree Liberty Interview: Argumentation Ethics and the Title-Transfer Theory of Contract KOL338 | Human Action Podcast Ep. 308 with Jeff Deist: Rothbard on Punishment, Property, and Contract Youtube: https://youtu.be/4tIlPMJeilA   TRANSCRIPT Interview of Williamson Evers on the Title-Transfer Theory of Contract Stephan Kinsella and Williamson Evers August 5, 2014 00:00:01 STEPHAN KINSELLA: Okay, this is Stephan Kinsella.  I’m here with Mr. Williamson Evers who I’ve never met in person, and he has graciously agreed to discuss with me a topic that I’ve been interested in, in a number of years, the title-transfer theory of contract.  And Mr. Evers, how are you doing? 00:00:19 WILLIAMSON EVERS: I’m fine, thank you.  So I’m Bill Evers, Williamson M. Evers.  I’m a Stanford PhD in political science, and I currently am a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford.  I was a friend of Murray Rothbard for many years and discussed political theory and philosophy of law questions with him including questions about the law of contracts.  So I think that’s what we’re going to discuss today. 00:01:01 STEPHAN KINSELLA: Absolutely, and I’ll just observe that I’ve been a fan of the Journal of Libertarian Studies, of course, since its inception, and I noticed that I think your article was the very first article every published in the JLS. 00:01:13 WILLIAMSON EVERS: That’s right.  It was the lead article in Volume 1 No. 1.