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

OBJECTIVE MEASUREMENTS OF DAILY ACTIVITY PATTERNS OF ‘SPORTIVE’ KNEE OSTEOARTHRITIS (KOA) PATIENTS

Knee osteoarthritis patients suffer from a painful disease but it has yet to be determined how their activities in daily life may be affected or whether they might still be able to engage in regular sports. To that effect, we measured and analyzed the physical activity patterns in a group of 15 self-reported sports-active KOA patients with accelerometric activity monitors

How can a democratic constitution survive an autocratic majority?

Can the democratic constitutions of Hungary and Poland survive an autocratic majority? Hardly. Hungary and Poland seem to be lost for liberal and democratic constitutionalism. At least for the time being, the next question is how democratic constitutionalism can prevent an autocratic majority. The task is to make it difficult for an autocratic parliamentary majority to capture the institutions of critique and control of government and to undermine separation of powers