Bills Of Rights Archive

Texts in italics are irredeemably unlibertarian.

• Codex Hammurabi (c. 1760 BC) - code governing property, contracts, externalities, criminal procedure, marriage, extramarital sex, eye-for-an-eye punishments, inflicted miscarriages, malpractice, (ship)builder liability, and some wages and rental prices. Gets better after Law 2, which says the accused is exonerated (and the accuser convicted) if the accused can survive being thrown in the river.
• The Twelve Tables (449 BC)
• Magna Carta (1215) - established due process and habeas corpus, but was thoroughly tainted by monarchism and feudalism
• English Bill of Rights (1689) - anticipates much of the U.S. BoR, but was thoroughly tainted by monarchism
• U.S. Bill of Rights (1789) - excellent, except tolerates eminent domain and quartering of troops
• Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) - pretty good, but articles 3,5,13,27 are too statist
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) - articles 1-21 are excellent, articles 22-29 are nanny-statist
• International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966) - rights defined (in secs. 6-27) are quite good except for article 20 against hate speech
• International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) - thoroughly nanny-statist
• Libertarian Party Statement of Principles (1972) - the enduring statement of principles and accompanying minarchist platform adopted by the first convention of the LP. Its only substantive change since 1972: the declaration that "the sole function of government is the protection of the rights of each individual" was changed in 1974 to say that "where governments exist, they must not violate the rights of any individual".
• An Open Letter to Mikhail Gorbachev (1990) - prominent economists make a persuasive case for land value taxation
• A Constitution of Liberty (1993) - the Bill of Rights from Roderick Long's anarchist/minarchist model constitution
• Declaration on Great Apes (1993) - Opposes killing, imprisonment, and torture of all great apes.
• The "Third Parties '96" Common Ground Declaration is somewhat vague and tainted by a little bit of nanny-statism
• Free Earth Party Platform (1996) - a geolibertarian platform of 13 sentences in six planks
• Extropian Principles 3.0 (1998) - not very political; endorses freedom, rationality, optimism, and technological progress
• Political Principles (2000) - some pre-geolibertarian principles of libertarian minarchism
• New Constitution of Liberty (2000) - Joel Skousen's constitution and bill of rights, based on Christian-friendly liberty-oriented principles
• Global Greens Charter (2001) - vague nanny-statism and communalism, lots of anti-market bias, but also this:
  • "those who profit from exploiting any common and/or natural resources should pay the full market rent for the use of these resources, and for any damage they do to any other common resources"
• 2002 Libertarian Party Platform - the last version of the detailed quasi-anarchist LP Platform before the 2004 reformat and the 2006 plank purge
• Humanist Manifesto III (2003) - excellent summary of humanist values, and has shed almost all the communalist nonsense from versions I and II, except for this clause:
  • "We seek to minimize the inequities of circumstance and ability, and we support a just distribution of nature’s resources and the fruits of human effort so that as many as possible can enjoy a good life."
• Green Party Platform (2004) - a detailed prescription for eco-communal tyranny; interesting excerpts:
  • "We encourage the social ownership and use of land at the community, local, and regional level. […] Allow municipalities to approve or disapprove large economic projects case-by-case based on environmental impacts, local ownership, community reinvestment, wage levels, andworking conditions."
  • "True Cost Pricing (TCP) is an accounting and pricing system that includes all costs into the price of a product. Under our current system, many products carry hidden environmental and social costs such as air and water pollution, deforestation, and toxic waste. These costs are created during the production, use, or disposal of the products. While the producer internalizes revenue and profits from these products, the costs are externalized to society and the natural environment."
  • "More progressive taxation. Sales, corporate and income taxes should be adjusted to relieve the burden on those less able to pay and increase the burden on large and multinational corporations and the super wealthy […] Imposing Carbon taxes on all fossil fuels. […] Encouraging the enactment of the Tobin tax on financial transactions across borders. Decrease taxes on labor. Re-establish the inheritance tax."
• Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (2006) - thoroughly nanny-statist
• Democratic Freedom Caucus Platform (2007) - generally good, excellent on LVT, but ambivalent on free trade
• A Geo-Libertarian Constitution and Bill of Rights (2007) - Fred Foldvary's brilliant but uncompromising geoanarchist manifesto
• The Free Earth Manifesto (2007) - a statement of principles about how individual rights relate to ecology, geography, and community
• 2008 Libertarian Party Platform - a reorganization and condensation of the LP platform, based almost entirely on language from previous LP platforms