A Modern Composition of Hegel in Blue, Yellow, and Black: A Study of Hegel\u27s Aesthetics

The paper investigates Hegel’s claim: “art is dead”. What does this phrase mean? What must we know about Hegel’s systematic thought before we can understand this question? Has Hegel claimed rightly? The author answers all of these questions in this study of Hegel, the qualities of Greek and Medieval art, and the meaning and purpose of modern art. The purpose of art, as with religion and philosophy, is to reveal the Absolute, the content of which is freedom. Hegel believes that because the modern human now asks the philosophical “Why?” art no longer can serve the highest function in culture. But isn’t modern contemporary art essentially all about freedom? If it is, Hegel’s verdict does not hold up. The author analyzes work from Duchamp and painters Kandinsky, Pereira, Koppe, Guston, and Mondrian. Such artists do not have merely negative freedom: they will their free will, too. Thus, Hegel’s “art is dead” amounts to a mere prediction, sublated by the philosophy of the post-modern age, capable of judging the modern world and the purpose modern art played in it

Not Fit to Be Tried: Due Process and Mentally-Incompetent Criminal Defendants

A mentally-impaired accused who cannot comprehend the nature of the proceedings or assist his counsel in presenting his defense to the criminal charge cannot be tried as a matter of due process of law. In Jackson v. Indiana, 1 the United States Supreme Court held that due process concerns also bar the never-ending jeopardy resulting from an inability to restore an impaired accused to competence for purposes of proceeding to trial. When an Arkansas circuit court ordered the dismissal of pending criminal charges against an impaired accused who could not be restored to fitness for trial, the Arkansas Supreme Court, in State v. Thomas, reversed the dismissal order, returning the defendant to a potential state of unending jeopardy. In failing to implement the Court’s directive in Jackson, the decision in Thomas leaves the state’s trial courts without a clear remedy for addressing the problems posed by mentally-impaired defendants who will never recover, and also leaves those defendants in the abyss of never-ending jeopardy. The focus of this article is the Thomas court’s failure to address the proper remedy when the trial court finds that an impaired defendant cannot be restored to fitness to proceed within a reasonable period of time. During its 2017 session, the Arkansas General Assembly adopted new procedures for conduct of mental evaluations relating to an accused’s fitness for trial or criminal responsibility in commission of the offense. The amendments bear on issues addressed in this article and are discussed briefly in the Legislative Update which follows

Concluding Thoughts on the Practical and Collateral Consequences of Anastasoff

The publication/citation debate inflamed by the Eighth Circuit decision has uncertain long-term implications. Among these impacts is the understanding of the parameters afforded federal courts by Article III of the United States Constitution. A number of other significant questions are raised, as well as including the access to and the reliance on the work product of the appellate courts

Furman, after Four Decades

Problems of racial discrimination in the imposition of capital sentences, disclosure of misconduct by prosecutors and police, inconsistency in the quality of defense afforded capital defendants, exoneration of death row inmates due to newly available DNA testing, and, most recently controversies surrounding the potential for cruelty in the execution process itself continue to complicate views about the morality, legality, and practicality of reliance on capital punishment to address even the most heinous of homicide offenses. Despite repeated efforts by the Supreme Court to craft a capital sentencing framework that ensures that death sentences be imposed fairly in light of the offenses committed and character of the offenders, perhaps the most profound questioning about capital punishment policy has come from within the Court itself. Capital punishment remains a difficult problem both in terms of constitutional criminal procedure and sound public policy. It will likely remain so far some time to come based on the Court\u27s unwavering commitment to its implicit holding in Furman v. Georgia that execution does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment