Review of The Dialectical Path of Law
By the author — Charles Lincoln
The following is another review of my recent book The Dialectical Path of Law but also a bit of personal insight into the writing of the book and the personal journey involved in writing it.
The Dialectical Path of Law is a non-fiction theoretical book I have been working on for several years. The book is about a general theory of law and jurisprudence spinning off Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’s (before his tenure on the U.S. Supreme Court) 1890s predictions theory of law in his Path of Law.
The book follows up with 20th-century theory and practice of law — especially in the international realm from the United Nations and the OECD — in addition to how linguistic theories from Wittgenstein to Scalia affect the law. The book pulls from sources as early as Anglo-Saxon common law from 1,000 years ago to recent law review articles.
This, in part, culminates my studies in law in the U.S. and Europe including my two masters after my J.D.
- I recieved my J.D. at Texas A&M University School of Law in May 2016.
- I engaged in formal study in The Netherlands at the University of Amsterdam for a masters of law (an LL.M. degree) in international tax law.
- In 2016–2017, I also embarked on research in Paris, France; England; Dublin, Ireland; and, Edinburgh and Stirling, Scotland.
- Furthermore, I completed a second LL.M. degree at Boston University in May 2018.
As a matter of personal history, my senior thesis as an undergraduate at focused on Hegelian dialectics. This senior thesis ended up in a law review article I published in law school — granted the law review expanded and contracted several times from the form of the senior thesis. Moreover, Hegelian theory has influenced my publications in tax, my two masters’ thesis topics, and my literary analysis publications. Likewise, the book — The Dialectical Path of Law — necessarily falls at the intersection of law, philosophy, history, anthropology, linguistics’ connection with lexicography, grammar, and history.
The following the Table of Contents as represented on the Rowan & Littlefield website:
Chapter 1: Anthropological Structuralism and Law
Chapter 2: Towards More Memes of Theories
Chapter 3: Is there a “Jungian Archetype” of Government? Structuralism and Constitutional Forms of Government in a Post-Modern World.
Chapter 4: What Is Money? The Debt — Promise to Pay — Answer to Anthropological Legal and Historical Analysis
Chapter 5: An Example Discussed
Chapter 6: Complication: Compare and Contrast the Policies of the U.S. Precedent as Outlined in Regard to Risk Allocation to BEPS Action 9 Report on Risk Allocation
Chapter 7: The Swerve to the Future
Chapter 8: Reason (1) U.S. Constitutional Policy Regarding International Law and the Concept of Stare Decisis
Chapter 9: Reason (2): Following the Concept of Stare Decisis: Summary of U.S. Tax Court Precedent on Transfer Pricing Regarding Risk Allocation
Chapter 10: Reason (3) The U.S. Tax Court Will Not Apply Action 9: Amazon Re-Examined, And the IRS’s Unwillingness and Inability to Apply OECD’s Action 9 Recommendations on Risk Analysis
Chapter 11: Compare and Contrast Current U.S. Precedent to BEPS Action 9 Report on Risk Allocation
Chapter 12: The Conclusion and Possible Answers to Chapters 5 through 11
Chapter 13: Policy Questions for the Future
Chapter 14: Can the System of Money and Debt Be a Sanctuary Legally?
Conclusion: Gödel, Escher, And Wittgenstein? The End of Philosophy and Linguistic Analysis of Law
The Dialectical Path of Law is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and with the publisher — Rowan & Littlefield.
© Charles Edward Andrew Lincoln IV
Charles Lincoln is currently a Ph.D. candidate studying and researching international tax law at the University of Groningen (Dutch: Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) in The Netherlands. Specifically, Lincoln’s research focuses on a comparison of the United States Commerce Clause’s (U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 3) case law on the “dormant commerce clause” in relation to tax law with European case law dealing with analogous issues. Lincoln received LL.M in tax law from Boston University in 2018 and an Advanced LL.M. from the University of Amsterdam (Dutch: Universiteit van Amsterdam) in international tax law in 2017. Lincoln may be reached at charlesedwardandrewlincolniv at post dot harvard dot edu.
