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15 GlobCon 1 (2026)

handle is hein.journals/globc15 and id is 1 raw text is: Global Constitutionalism (2026), 15: 1, 1-10 CAMBRIDGE doi:10.1017/S2045381726100227 UNIVERSITY PRESS EDITORIAL Global constitutionalism and/as enlightenment Jared Holley', Antje Wiener2'3, Andrea Birdsall' , Stephanie Law4 , Susan Kang; and Jo Shaw6 'School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh, UK; 2Department of Political Science & Department of Law, University of Hamburg, Germany; 3Department of Political Science & Department of Law, University of Cambridge, Hughes Hall, UK; 4Law School, University of Southampton, UK; 'John Jay college of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, New York, USA and 6School of Law, University of Edinburgh, UK Corresponding author: Jared Holley; Email: j.holley@ed.ac.uk Abstract This editorial considers how scholars interested in issues of global constitutionalism should approach the questions that have concerned those interested in enlightenment. Reflecting on the relocation of the journal's editorial offices to Edinburgh, we foreground discussions from the historiography of the long eighteenth century that should be of interest to scholars of international relations, international law and political theory. Two main contributions are emphasized. First, a contextualist and political approach to enlightenment invites us to see global constitutionalism as a strategic response to crisis, aiming to combat fanaticism. Second, a global approach to enlightenment invites us to continue enlarging the world of global constitutionalism. Taken together, the contributions support the journal's ongoing efforts to decolonize global constitutionalism by enjoining readers and contributors to attend to neglected sides and sites of global constitutional processes. Keywords: enlightenment; global constitutionalism; intellectual history; political thought Race and Enlightenment: the Hume controversy The relocation in January 2025 of the journal's editorial offices to Edinburgh provides a welcome opportunity to reflect on the relationship between global constitutionalism and enlightenment. The city of Edinburgh is widely recognized as the epicentre ofthe Scottish Enlightenment, with statues of Adam Smith (1723-1790) and David Hume (1711-1776) fixtures of its famous Royal Mile. The University of Edinburgh, too, is remembered as the site of debates among faculty and students that helped to distil and consolidate what Hume came to call 'the science of man'. But Global Constitutionalism's arrival in Edinburgh comes in the wake of controversy that has decidedly lowered the public standing of both Hume and the distinctive blend of natural history, moral philosophy and medicine to which he referred. In 2020, University students successfully petitioned to have Hume's name removed from the tallest building on campus. The controversy invoked debates that have been © The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.