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5 Libertarian Papers 219 (2013)
Inchoate Crime, Accessories, and Constructive Malice in Libertarian Law

handle is hein.journals/libpa5 and id is 237 raw text is: LIBERTARIAN PAPERS INCHOATE CRIME, ACCESSORIES, AND CONSTRUCTIVE MALICE IN LIBERTARIAN LAW BEN O'NEILL AND WALTER BLOCK* This paper arose out of a previous enquiry to one of the authors regarding whether a particular set of actions which may constitute an inchoate crime under present positive law would also amount to a crime under libertarian standards. By an inchoate crime we refer to a crime that is incomplete in some respect (the exact definition is discussed further below). This paper is concerned with the application of libertarian moral- political theory to assess legal doctrines on inchoate crimes and related matters in criminal law. In particular, we examine the account of natural law provided by Rothbard (2002) and elaborated in O'Neill (2012), and use this to assess the legitimacy of various legal doctrines under a libertarian account of natural law. (Questions pertaining to the structure and practices of enforcement agencies under libertarianism, and the nature of the resulting court/police system, are beyond the scope of our present inquiry.) The libertarian account of natural law A la Rothbard grounds laws in objective rules applying to the acquisition and transfer of property interests, *Ben O'Neill (ben.oneill@hotmail.com) is a Lecturer in Statistics at the University of New South Wales (Canberra). Walter E. Block (wblockgloyno.edu) is Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair and Professor of Economics at Loyola University (New Orleans). We have benefitted immensely from the comments of two very active and helpful referees. Any remaining infelicities and errors of commission and omission are entirely our own. CITATION INFORMATION FOR THIS ARTICLE: Ben O'Neill and Walter Block. 2013. Inchoate Crime, Accessories, and constructive malice under Libertarian Law. Libertaran Papers. 5 (2): 219-250. ONLINE AT: libet napr . THIS ARTICLE IS subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (creativecommons.org/licenses). 219 VOL. 5, No. 2 (2013)

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