16th International Vernon Smith Prize

ECAEF announces the topic for this years’ XVI. International Vernon Smith Prize:

The Rule of Law. Its Meaning and Purpose

Call for papers!

It is feasible that during the long reception of Roman Law, the legal term ‘Nomos’ was deficiently translated by ‘Lex’ instead of ‘Jus’ and thus led to a semantic trap quite similar to the replacement of ‘the Rule of Law’ by that of ‘a rule of law’ in modern democracies. While the latter is used to designate some particular legal directives (e.g. pay taxes at a certain time), the Rule of Law refers to Nomos, the entire body of law and its institutions. As a venerable ideal of our political morality it shaped the continental concept of the ‘Rechtsstaat’. The Rule of Law or more accurate, Government under the Law is a safeguard of individual liberty, meaning that the state has no other power over private citizens than that which is necessary to secure general legal statutes, equally applicable to all. In other words, the Rule of Law determines the attributes which ideally law should have and thus can take on a number of denotations ranging from those which depict the law as a means for the protection of legitimate individual rights to those which depict it as an efficient and socially beneficial means of institutional control. However, this means neither that the state is restricted to enforcing the law, nor that the state is restricted in its other activities by statutory provisions. Although the statutes necessary for running the state as well as the parliamentarian authorizations to the state are also called ‘laws’ in everyday parlance, they are by their nature quite different from the Rule of Law that applies to all citizens, legislatures and government agencies. Because the Rule of Law relates to actions that affect others, it can be compared to the rules of a game, which do not prohibit what is allowed to someone else under the same conditions. Are we still under the Rule of Law or are we pushed around by the law of rules?

– 1st Prize: €4,000 –
– 2nd Prize: €3,000 –
– 3rd Prize: €2,000 –

All entries must meet the following five requirements:

1. Entries may be submitted by individuals of up to 30 years (in 2023) and must be received on or before November 20, 2023.

2. Entries may not exceed 10 pages, including a full bibliography and a 1/2 page abstract; 1.5 spacing; left/right margins no less then 1 inch.

3. No entry may be generated by ChatGPT or other applications. Participants must commit to refrain from any such support in writing. Any use of an AI bot to create a contending essay will be considered in breach of academic plagiarism policy.

4. Entries must be submitted in English in electronic form (PDF) to krl@ecaef.li and must include a current CV with Date of Birth and a promise in writing to not having used any AI bot for the creation of the submitted essay.

5. Prizes are not transferable. An international jury will judge essays on the basis of originality, grasp of subject and the logical consistence of the argument. Winners will be invited to present their papers at a special event in Vaduz (Principality of Liechtenstein) on Monday, February 12, 2024. Their presence is mandatory.

Waiting for your essays. Good luck!

The International Vernon Smith Prize has been established in 2008 by ECAEF for the advancement of Austrian Economics. It is named after Professor Vernon Lomax Smith (born in 1927). He is professor of economics at Chapman University’s Argyros School of Business and Economics and School of Law in Orange, California, a research scholar at George Mason University Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science, and a Fellow of the Mercatus Center, all in Arlington, Virginia. Smith shared the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Daniel Kahneman. He is also the founder and president of the International Foundation for Research in Experimental Economics, a Member of the Board of Advisors for The Independent Institute, and a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington D.C.

16th Vernon Smith Prize (2023): The Rule of Law. Its Meaning and Purpose

15th Vernon Smith Prize (2022): …if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

14th Vernon Smith Prize (2021): The Pretense of Knowledge as a Method of Governance

13th Vernon Smith Prize (2020): Is the Public Interest really in the public’s interest?

12th Vernon Smith Prize (2019): When the People fear their Government, there is Tyranny. When the Government fears the People, there is Liberty

11th Vernon Smith Prize (2018): Obscured by Fake News: The Politics, Morals, and Limits of Genetic Engineering

10th Vernon Smith Prize (2017): Does Tolerance become a crime when applied to evil?

9th Vernon Smith Prize (2016): Direct Democracy versus Representative Democracy. Cost and Benefits for the Citizenry!

8th Vernon Smith Prize (2015): Edward J. Snowden – Hero or Villian?

7th Vernon Smith Prize (2014): Trusting politicians with our money is like leaving a cat in charge of a cream jug.

6th Vernon Smith Prize (2013): Public Debt? Cheat the Citizen!

5th Vernon Smith Prize (2012): “A Government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.” – George Bernhard Shaw

4th Vernon Smith Prize (2011): The Rule of Law in Decline – “It seems clear that a nominally unlimited (sovereign) representative assembly must be progressively driven into a steady and unlimited extension of the powers of government.” – Friedrich A. von Hayek

3rd Vernon Smith Prize (2010): Concurrent Currencies: A Choice in Money to Solve the Crisis?

2nd Vernon Smith Prize (2009): “This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. It is what capitalism consists in and what every capitalist concern has got to live in.” – Joseph A. Schumpeter

1st Vernon Smith Prize (2008): Nation, State, and Liberty – At the occasion of the 2nd. edition of Ludwig von Mises’ German original “Nation, Staat und Wirtschaft” ECAEF invited papers on this topic.