Can the 'post-national constellation' be re-constitutionalized

The constitutionalization of the state, the juridification of political power is one of the major achievements in the civilization of modern politics. Can and will this achievement survive the post-national constellation? The state no longer possesses all powers but some of its ruling authority has been transferred to non-state actors. Increasingly, regulations are the result of negotiations and agreements between state agencies and private parties. This, on the one hand, affects democratic legitimacy, since the parliaments are more and more sidelined. But these processes also undermine the rule of law. Such agreements evade the necessary formalization of law as they are rarely publicized. Nevertheless they are necessary to provide public goods. Globalization and internationalization further aggravate this problem. And the constitutionalization of international politics offers no ready-made solution for this problem: The WTO or even the EU both have to rely on the regular means of physical coercion still controlled by nation states. Even the EU is not a union of the people but of its member states, its democratic legitimacy is limited and, above all, its legalization and constitutionalization is rather circumscribed, and that can be attributed to the very same forces which also undermine democratic accountability at the state level. The aspiration expressed in the concept of constitutions and constitutionalization can, therefore, not even be approximately realized on the global level. --

Trace maps, invariants, and some of their applications

Trace maps of two-letter substitution rules are investigated with special emphasis on the underlying algebraic structure and on the existence of invariants. We illustrate the results with the generalized Fibonacci chains and show that the well-known Fricke character I(x,y,z) = x^2 + y^2 + z^2 - 2 x y z - 1 is not the only type of invariant that can occur. We discuss several physical applications to electronic spectra including the gap-labeling theorem, to kicked two-level systems, and to the classical 1D Ising model with non-commuting transfer matrices.Comment: 23 pages, including 2 figures, paper made available here due to renewed interes

Can the 'post-national constellation' be re-constitutionalized

The constitutionalization of the state, the juridification of political power is one of the major achievements in the civilization of modern politics. Can and will this achievement survive the post-national constellation? The state no longer possesses all powers but some of its ruling authority has been transferred to non-state actors. Increasingly, regulations are the result of negotiations and agreements between state agencies and private parties. This, on the one hand, affects democratic legitimacy, since the parliaments are more and more sidelined. But these processes also undermine the rule of law. Such agreements evade the necessary formalization of law as they are rarely publicized. Nevertheless they are necessary to provide public goods. Globalization and internationalization further aggravate this problem. And the constitutionalization of international politics offers no ready-made solution for this problem: The WTO or even the EU both have to rely on the regular means of physical coercion still controlled by nation states. Even the EU is not a union of the people but of its member states, its democratic legitimacy is limited and, above all, its legalization and constitutionalization is rather circumscribed, and that can be attributed to the very same forces which also undermine democratic accountability at the state level. The aspiration expressed in the concept of constitutions and constitutionalization can, therefore, not even be approximately realized on the global level

Konservativismus als Treue zur Verfassung: ein Nachruf auf Antonin Scalia

Hielte man in Deutschland eine Umfrage nach den Namen der Richter des Bundesverfassungsgerichts ab, würde wohl bei den meisten, selbst bei vielen Juristen, Verlegenheit einsetzen. Stellte man in den USA die Frage nach den Namen der Richter des Supreme Court, würde fast jeder Befragte in der Lage sein zu antworten. Würde dieselbe Frage im Ausland gestellt, könnten nicht wenige, selbst Nicht-Juristen, zumindest einen Namen nennen: Antonin Scalia. Am Samstag ist das markanteste Mitglied des amerikanischen Supreme Court unerwartet gestorben. Trotz seiner 79 Jahre strotzte Scalia vor Vitalität und Angriffslust wie immer. Mit seiner Ankunft im Supreme Court 1986 wurden die mündlichen Verhandlungen des Gerichts wieder sehens- und hörenswert

Isolation and characterisation of neural crest-derived stem cells from adult ovine palatal tissue

Adult mammalian craniofacial tissues contain limited numbers of post-migratory neural crest-derived stem cells. Similar to their embryonic counterparts, these adult multipotent stem cells can undergo multi-lineage differentiation and are capable of contributing to regeneration of mesodermal and ectodermal cells and tissues in vivo. In the present study, we describe for the first time the presence of Nestin-positive neural crest-derived stem cells (NCSCs) within the ovine hard palate. We show that these cells can be isolated from the palatal tissue and are able to form neurospheres. Ovine NCSCs express the typical neural crest markers Slug and Twist, exhibit high proliferative and migratory activity and are able to differentiate into α smooth muscle cells and β-III-tubulin expressing ectodermal cells. Finally, we demonstrate that oNCSCs are capable of differentiating into osteogenic, adipogenic and chondrogenic cells. Taken together, our results suggest that oNCSCs could be used as model cells to assess the efficacy and safety of autologous NCSC transplantation in a large animal model

Moduli Dependent Non-Holomorphic Contributions of Massive States to Gravitational Couplings and C2C^2-Terms in ZNZ_N-Orbifold Compactifications

It is pointed out that massive states in D=4, N=1 supergravity-matter theories can, in general, at the 1-loop level contribute non-holomorphic terms to quadratic gravitational couplings. It is then shown in the context of $(2,2)$-symmetric $Z_N$-orbifold theories that, for constant moduli backgrounds, the inclusion of such contributions can result in the cancellation of naked $C^2$-terms. ${\cal R}^2$-terms can also arise but, being ghost free, need not cancel.Comment: 38 pages, HUB-IEP-94/20, UPR-634T (references added