I Chose Liberty - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Bruce L. Benson 43
There were several valuable reviews of various drafts of The Enterprise of Law that
helped me to this realization, but one stands out. Randy Barnett’s review was pretty much
a book manuscript by itself. In addition to large numbers of excellent and detailed comments
and suggestions to improve the manuscript, he pointed me to several readings that
really changed the way I think about law and the state. It may not be surprising that Randy,
a lawyer, suggested Lon Fuller and Harold Berman, for instance, but he also urged me to
read F. A. Hayek (in particular, the first volume of Law, Legislation, and Liberty) and Murray
Rothbard. Even though I had been very impressed with Murray’s comments on the paper
mentioned above, I did not know that he had written so extensively on the issues I was
exploring, and did not discover much of his work until Randy pointed it out to me. My
first exposure to Austrian economists resulted from these suggestions from a law professor,
then, rather than any of the economists I knew. By adding the Austrian perspective to my
public choice background, I found that I had even better intellectual justifications for my
long-standing dislike of discretionary power. I also found much stronger justifications for
my admiration of individualists.
There were other important influences on my evolving views of the state and law
during this same period of discovery. I moved to Montana State University in 1982 where
I was able to interact with P. J. Hill, Terry Anderson (although Terry was actually away
from the University for much of the three years that I spent there), Ron Johnson, John
Baden, Rick Stroup (also away from campus for most of my stay), Jeff Lafrance, and a
number of other very good free-market people, several of whom were clearly willing to
seriously consider the possibility of law without the state. I also began to correspond with
Leonard Liggio when I applied to the Institute for Humane Studies for one of their
F. Leroy Hill Faculty Fellowships. Leonard has probably read everything ever written on
the topics I was working on for The Enterprise of Law and he was very willing to advise
me and steer me in the right directions (in fact, one of my ongoing long-running projects
is a book on the evolution of law, which, if I ever finish it, probably should be titled:
“What Leonard Liggio has told me About the Evolution of Law”). Thus, I drew freely
from many of the paradigms in economics, including the “property-rights” school, “neoinstitutional
economics,” Chicago-School economics, and Austrian Economics, looking
for ways to help me articulate my views.
I continued to correspond with Murray, asking his advice about what to read as I
worked on my book. I sent him a few more papers for the JLS too, each of which produced
“Murray letters” (totally unique letters like the one described above, that only Murray could
write). I finally got to actually meet him in person at a conference that we both attended
in the mid 1980s. He was just as gracious and encouraging in person as he had been in his
letters. After that we ran into each other at several more conferences. In addition, I went
on the job market in a limited and selective way after two and a half very productive years
at Montana State with virtually no raises due to tight University budgets. While I ended
up accepting an offer from Florida State University, I also had an offer from Auburn, where
I met a number of people affiliated with the Mises Institute (after that I decided that I
should read Mises as well as Rothbard and Hayek). They have been kind enough to invite
me to some of their conferences, where I got to interact with Murray some more.