Two internal critiques of political constitutionalism

The antagonism between legal and political constitutionalism has almost monopolized the discussion on constitutional theory during the last years. For this reason, political constitutionalism has been assessed mainly as an alternative to legal constitutionalism. Moving beyond this perspective, this article intends to focus exclusively on political constitutionalism and its internal tensions. After having outlined the main tenets of this theory, two internal critiques are put forward, both concerning the understanding of the political aspect of constitutionalism: first, political constitutionalists propose a reductive account of the principle of political equality; second, their exclusive focus on ordinary politics as the centre of constitutional life is misleading and precludes a correct evaluation of constitutional politics

A note from the editors: the state of the political constitution

The revival of the political constitution has come about in parallel with two developments, one in constitutional practice and the other in political theory. With regard to the former, the political constitution has been seen as something of a bulwark against the rise of legal (or judicial, or common law) constitutionalism.  The seeming hegemony of this latter model of constitutionalism among contemporary lawyers and political scientists has produced from (so-called) political constitutionalists a reaction against the delegation of important decisions to non-political institutions and an obsessively court-centered scholarship.  Perceiving this shift in focus from political to legal institutions to be the very antithesis of the traditional Commonwealth (more particularly, of the United Kingdom’s parliamentary) model of constitutionalism, and, more broadly, to be an affront to democratic sensibilities, the notion of the political constitution was retrieved and defended in a seminal article in the 1979 edition of the Modern Law Review, written (though first delivered in his Chorley Lecture the previous year) by the late John Griffith.  More recently, in the work of Adam Tomkins, Richard Bellamy, and Grégoire Webber and Graham Gee, a normative interpretation has been lent to Griffith’s thesis so as to provide a full-fledged constitutional theory capable of standing as an alternative to the liberal-legal paradigm—a turn, one might say, from the political constitution to political constitutionalism

Wigner crystallization in quantum electron bilayers

The phase diagram of quantum electron bilayers in zero magnetic field is obtained using density functional theory. For large electron densities the system is in the liquid phase, while for smaller densities the liquid may freeze (Wigner crystallization) into four different crystalline phases; the lattice symmetry and the critical density depend on the the inter-layer distance. The phase boundaries between different Wigner crystals consist of both first and second order transitions, depending on the phases involved, and join the freezing curve at three different triple points.Comment: To appear in Europhys. Lett. (11 pages in REVTEX + 2 figures in postscript

Reduced electron relaxation rate in multi-electron quantum dots

We use a configuration-interaction approach and Fermi golden rule to investigate electron-phonon interaction in realistic multi-electron quantum dots. Lifetimes are computed in the low-density, highly correlated regime. We report numerical evidence that electron-electron interaction generally leads to reduced decay rates of excited electronic states in weakly confined quantum dots, where carrier relaxation is dominated by the interaction with longitudinal acoustic phonons.Comment: to appear in Phys. Rev. Let

Triplet-Singlet Spin Relaxation in Quantum Dots with Spin-Orbit Coupling

We estimate the triplet-singlet relaxation rate due to spin-orbit coupling assisted by phonon emission in weakly-confined quantum dots. Our results for two and four electrons show that the different triplet-singlet relaxation trends observed in recent experiments under magnetic fields can be understood within a unified theoretical description, as the result of the competition between spin-orbit coupling and phonon emission efficiency. Moreover, we show that both effects are greatly affected by the strength of the confinement and the external magnetic field, which may give access to very long-lived triplet states as well as to selective population of the triplet Zeeman sublevels.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. Closely related to recent experiments in cond-mat/060972

Raman signatures of classical and quantum phases in coupled dots: A theoretical prediction

We study electron molecules in realistic vertically coupled quantum dots in a strong magnetic field. Computing the energy spectrum, pair correlation functions, and dynamical form factor as a function of inter-dot coupling via diagonalization of the many-body Hamiltonian, we identify structural transitions between different phases, some of which do not have a classical counterpart. The calculated Raman cross section shows how such phases can be experimentally singled out.Comment: 9 pages, 2 postscript figures, 1 colour postscript figure, Latex 2e, Europhysics Letters style and epsfig macros. Submitted to Europhysics Letter