 First of all I would like to thank you and Gulshin for the invitation here. It is a privilege and an honor to be in the boardroom at the PFS conference and I hope to tell you something interesting this afternoon. My talk to this afternoon comes from a suggestion by Professor Hoppe last year. If you didn't hear his presentation last year I urge you to do so. It was a presentation about Swiss political scientist jurist Carl Ludwig von Haller. He lived from 1768 to 1854 and his main work has the title Restoration of the Political Science and his main enemies were the theorists of the social contract. So his aim is to destroy the idea that the power comes somehow magically from the people and there is a sort of delegation of powers from the people to the governments which is still the foundation of most of our modern states. If you the social contract is always mentioned especially during the last years in a negative sense the social contract has been broken but anyway this is something which we learned from school. There is a social contract there is a sort of covenant at the basis of all societies. Ludwig von Haller with his ideas I will expand on his ideas later during my talk wasn't very liked as a thinker. I may mention two very negative remarks on Carl Ludwig von Haller. One by his by Hegel who wrote something very interesting of course he said Carl Ludwig von Haller is wrong and his idea of the state is completely different and he says which something which is very interesting he said if the state is confused with a protection agency for property and personal freedom then membership is just an optional matter Hegel wrote this and he said this is why Carl Ludwig von Haller is completely wrong but I think this is a very interesting remark from a philosopher like Hegel if you're familiar with his idea of the state as the highest duty of any individual to be a member of the state. Another very negative remark about Carl Ludwig von Haller came from Hannah Arendt in the origins of totalitarianism. She said basically my fear is without ever reading Haller. She said he is just an advocate for the Ancien regime he was one one of the of the theorists who tried to to find a basis for the restoration. In fact his main opus the first volume was published in 1816 and he wrote the following five volumes it's it's a big work until 1834. In fact Haller doesn't say much about Roman law this is not the main topic of his research is the main topic of his research are modern states are the kingdoms are the princes are the republics and democracies and this is what he analyzes and he tries to find and in fact in my opinion he does find a new theory to explain why states exists and what they do at the theory which is of course at odds with the with a theory of social contract. So Roman law is not his topic and he just makes a few passing remarks on Roman law a few passing remarks which are however highly intelligent and very interesting in a 10 pages more or less he gives a short and brief analysis of Roman law and especially of the influence of Roman law on modern state theories. First off he says Roman private law is a very good system he says it's a treasure trove of very reasonable principles which are valid at all times and this is the experience that anyone who studied law had with Roman law. Roman law in fact is the the basis of the modern civil codes most countries in continental Europe use civil codes which are a direct derivation from from Roman law. In some countries Roman law is still applied after 2000 years and you may remember the very favorable opinion of Bruno Leone on Roman law he said basically that Roman law with its very slow development through the work of experts of judges and the slow accumulation of principles is maybe a model of for libertarian law of how law would be discovered in a free society. Bruno Leone says law cannot be posited it's not the work of a sovereign but it has to be discovered starting from some basic principles and this is basically Roman private law and Haller says the same thing basically. What is very different is his evaluation of Roman public law and this is what I find extremely interesting he said Roman public law influenced very negatively modern thought about the state and Roman public law may be the the culprit the responsible for the very damaging theory of social contract. He gives a number of reasons why this happens first of all the fascination of classical culture classical culture is still important for any one of us we read ancient authors we are under the spell of authors like Cicero like the Greek philosophy like the Roman historians. Latin has been widely used says Carl Ludwig von Haller it was the lingua franca during the Middle Ages in Europe you spoke Latin and Latin was the language of of academia of the universities until a certain time no one in his mind would ever think to write something important in French or in Italian or in German but it was just Latin. Then he makes another very interesting remark he says the problem is the adoption of Roman terminology because if legal theorists talked about the state they couldn't but use the Latin terms used for public law. And here he says we have a problem because the Roman terminology is mainly Republican it comes from a Republican time and it was adapted to the to the Roman Empire of course it was part of the of the giant propaganda operation of the early emperors especially of Augustus to tell the Roman people that the Republic was still there whereas Haller says it was just usurpation it was just a military dictatorship. But still Roman Roman authors continued to use terms which are adapted to a Republic and not to a monarchy like for example Societas civilis so I have the Italian church pronunciation so I would say Societas civilis civitas respublicas populus comitia patrimonium populi this is very important patrimony of the people public monies which is he says completely illogical with a monarchy especially the idea that he says is that the the Republican terminology passed over to modern states and so in a way there was this this idea under current of course that the states belong to the people so this is basically what Haller says about Roman law and its influence on modern state thinking he says this idea that the states are somehow based on the on the public on the power of the people on the sort of transfer of sovereignty from the from the public public assemblies to the magistrates this is the cause why we had the theories of social contract and may mention Thomas Hobbes John Locke Rousseau and so on and the modern idea that the states come out of a sort of a covenant between the people and the structure of power I would like to expand a little bit of on on Rome why does this idea come from Rome I think it makes perfectly sense ancient Rome both the the age of the Kings and the early age of the of the Republic may be described as a corporation of robbers ancient Rome was based on the idea that might is right on the idea of conquest on the idea that the the strongest has the right to kill the enemies to deport them as slaves to steal their private property and this was basically the the the way to do it in in ancient Europe and a city-state like Rome I really like to to compare it to a corporation of robbers the early Kings were elective and it is important to note that one of the most ancient traditions of of Roman public law is the so-called Lex the imperial it is the law by which often fictitiously but anyway this is survived until the age of the emperors by which the assembly of the people transfers the absolute military power to the Kings first and then to the magistrates it is a very important passage of of Roman law of Roman public law because even the elected officials the consuls the praetors and so on they couldn't really exercise their power especially their military power without the Lex the imperial which was formal but very important Rome developed during the passage I would say a very important passage in ancient military history because the world passed from a sort of a hero heroic warfare where there were some champions some knights who were the most the strongest in in war and the ablest in war and and the history the story of the of the Horatzi and the Kuriatsi is a good example of this kind of of war making with some champions who fight against each other in a in a singular fight to a system of large infantry armies this happened first with Alexander the great who with his opleads with the with the large infantry armies conquered most of the of the known world and this had as a consequence the first big struggle between the patricians and the plebeians since the nobility and the nobility of war wasn't able to do war anymore because they needed the people the plebeians managed to to get some political clout during a number of revolutions of secessions and so on and during the first period of the of the Republic a system developed where there was this corporation managed mainly by the nobility with certain rights of the of the common people who were mainly armed peasants and who a part of them where the upper class of the peasants of those who could buy and maintain horse a war horse the cavalry was very important during the first time and then the importance of the cavalry went down in comparison to the to the infantry but it was an alliance between nobility and armed peasants with a large number of proletarians who didn't have any importance not in war and not in in the in the government of course Rome expands it conquers enormous territories first in Italy and then in the rest of Europe and the second big clash that develops between the the social classes is the one between the the soldiers and the armed peasants who participated in the very long and very very tiresome military campaigns of Rome and the nobility the clash is about the the land the idea of the nobility was that they had the exclusive right to get the conquered lands and the the plebeians the soldiers laid a claim on these lands and this is the the the issue of of the whole crisis of the republic which I would start with the reforms of the of the gracken brothers the grackie who tried to find a way to distribute the the conquered lands to the soldiers now I have make a small incurs on Roman military law which is very important to understand Roman public law the central concept which is the concept which still is the origin of our idea of of sovereignty of of absolute power is the concept of imperium the imperium is the absolute power of the military commander the Roman commanders the victorious Roman commanders are hailed emperors by their soldiers but anyway there is a fundamental distinction in Roman public law between what happens in Rome and to certain distance from Rome which is called dummy at at home and what happens in the army militia there is this this expression dummy militia where home and military and the powers of the magistrates and the duties of the subjects were completely different in in the two sections in whereas in Rome there were certain guarantees from absolute powers for example a very important law is the law about the provocatio of populum this is the right of appeal of the persons who have been condemned by the by the highest magistrates by the consuls by the preters to appeal to the people and this is a very important guarantee for the Roman citizens but this works at home in Rome it doesn't work in the military where the power of the military commander is absolute it is structured on the idea of the power of the ancient father familias the head of the family and it is a power of life and death it is disciplinary power and Rome's armies were very effective in realizing the principle that the soldiers must be way more afraid of their commanders than of the enemies Roman military discipline was one of the strictest ever ever put in place the any soldier could be put to death for the slightest disobedience and for the slightest misgiving in in in his military duties and the the central concept of Roman power is the concept of imperium the power the concept of absolute power it is the power of war it is the power of conquest one very interesting etymology is that of province province is Provincia and it means it has it has been conquered it comes from being chilly from from winning the war so it is the territory that has been militarily subdued at a certain point the equilibrium between the social classes crumbles over the the question of the of the distribution of the lands and another very important passage in Roman history is the reform the army reform of Marius Marius the opponent of Sulla he was a very successful military commander and he was the of the party of the so-called populars the populares the the democrats like mom's and says he had nothing democratic but anyway and on the other side there were was the landed nobility Marius has a stroke of genius and he decides to let the proletarians the the head count the so-called capita chancee get into the army so the lowest classes of the of the people can make a career as soldiers making a career as soldiers means of course taking risks traveling through whole Europe but still having part of the of the of the booty and having part especially of of the the promise that all Roman generals at the end of the republic make to their soldiers to have part in the distribution of the lands the reform of Marius gives rise to the power of the military commanders it is the origin of what later will become the absolute power of the of the emperors we use you are used to consider Caesar as the first Emperor so-called Emperor and Augustus the real first Emperor of the Roman Empire in reality the Roman politician who started the Empire is Pompeii and there is a very important law in in Roman public history which is the Lex Gabinia the piratis perseguendis it is a law which gave Pompeii the absolute power on all the provinces even on most part of the Italian territory to set up very powerful navy to fight the pirates he is very successful after winning against the pirates another law is passed to give him the command in Asia against the King Mithridatus which is the Lex Manila and for a number of years Pompeii is the absolute ruler of the Roman and what we now call the Roman Empire and this is the first instance of the establishing of a mixture between civil and military power Pompeii is both a civil ruler he organizes the Asian provinces he destroys the cities and the strongholds of the pirates and at the same time he is the absolute military commander it is very interesting to note as on the side that whereas this happens or shortly before this happens there was a revolution going on a revolution started by a former military commander Sertorius who took hold of Spain and who had some unseemingly allies in the the pirates themselves the King Mithridatus who exchanged ambassadors with with Sertorius from one side from Turkey to to Spain and some Celtic tribes who tried to free themselves from the from the Roman from the Roman power and it is an attempt to establish a different world which is not based on the ruthless exploitation of the provinces and maybe but I think maybe this is a very modern interpretation but anyway to do something to defend freedom against the the Roman Empire of course Sertorius is defeated not militarily but by by a traitor who gives him venom the Romans win the Celtic tribes first in Spain are completely destroyed and then afterwards the example of Pompeii is the big example that Julius Caesar follows it is interesting to note that the first military command of Julius Caesar was in Spain so the first thing he did was to pacify according to Roman standards in reality to subdue completely Spain which was very important for precious metals and for natural resources then he goes back he is elected council and the year after he gets exactly as Pompeii a special command in Gaul and he does the same thing as Pompeii Pompeii didn't have the courage to go to Rome with his armies he at a certain point this was too much of a of a constitutional violation for him but this is exactly what Julius Caesar does and after Caesar comes back he takes hold of the state as the first emperor in many regards but he still thinks that he can come to terms with the landed aristocracy so he gives lots of pardons of course he is enormously rich because in the meanwhile he robbed all the gold of Gaul which was a very rich country he killed according to modern statistics between 1 million and 3 million people there with swords you must imagine what what kind of massacre it has been and he comes back enormously rich he changes the world forever because Gaul becomes Roman province and he tries to come to terms with the landed aristocracy it does he fails because they kill him as it is widely known and his successor Octavianus and then later Augustus does come to terms on a completely different basis he kills them all this is what what he does basically through the system of the prescriptions prescription means sale of confiscated goods in practice this means they are killed except the few ones who come to terms with the new regime and what is very important to note from Augustus and Caesar they change history they change the past they are very able propaganda men and they managed to convince the posterity even us that in a sort of way they established the peace no the idea of the Pax Romana comes from that time whereas in fact they are military commanders who managed to establish their ruthless dominion on on on the world in a way what happened at the times of Julius Caesar and Augustus is a great reset which succeeded we must think of it the half of the world speaks Romanic languages in France you speak French and in Spain which is the one of the heirs of the Roman Empire spread Spanish through all the world the ancient world was completely destroyed by by the Romans of course there are some good things as I mentioned before Roman private law but still they managed to reset the world completely during these 50 70 years which transformed everything so we have a state which is based on military might on absolute power and what is the solution of Carl Ludwig von Haller to come to him and this is the conclusion of my speech what does he think is the foundation of states he said princes and republics do not and cannot exercise more power than they would have as individuals so he bases the power of the states just on private property on contracts and basically on voluntary relationship where someone has the power but it is no different says Carl Ludwig from from Haller from the power that maybe an owner has or maybe the power that someone who has superior knowledge has in in his relationships with the ones who want to learn from him and what is very important is Carl Ludwig von Haller says power is always limited by natural law which means by the law of freedom and private property and he said there are three ways to defend yourselves in comparison to abuse of power and to the to the wrong use of power the first is religion so the rulers should adhere to certain religious principles the second which is very important in my opinion is resistance even violent resistance so he said if you can and if states abuse of their power you can resist and you can violent violently resist against them he says even revenge may be a form of resistance third and last resort is flight but anyway his states are states based basically on voluntary associations a few years after Haller wrote his Magnum Opus Gustav de Molinari wrote his very important article about the private production of security and he says there should be competition among governments I think this goes in the direction of Haller's ideas and the in the direction of libertarian ideas thank you very attention