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20 Int'l J. Const. L. 1 (2022)

handle is hein.journals/injcl20 and id is 1 raw text is: C The Author(s) 2022. Oxford University Press and New York University School of Law. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com Editorial Guest editorial: Liberal constitutionalism and postcolonialism in the South and beyond: On liberalism as an open source and the insights of decolonial critiques; On my way out-Advice to young scholars VII: Taking exams seriously (part 1); In this issue We invited Philipp Dann, Professor of Public and Comparative Law at Humboldt University, Berlin, to contribute a Guest Editorial. Liberal constitutionalism and postcolonialism in the South and beyond: On liberalism as an open source and the insights of decolonial critiques1 It is probably fair to say that these are not the best days for liberal constitutionalism. I don't need to mention the Russian aggression, which is nothing less than a direct assault on liberal constitutionalism. There are enough other places in the East and West, North and South, where authoritarians contest the basic structures of liberal constitutions and societies. And not only authoritarians; from the progressive side too, contestations of liberal ideas are very popular these days. But what does the debate look like, when analyzed through the lens of postcolonial theories or from the perspective of the South? Is there a basic incompatibility of liberal constitutionalism and postcolonialism, as some claim? Or is it rather the other way around: can postcolonial or Southern perspectives highlight problems and potentials of liberal constitutionalism in especially productive ways? In this Editorial, I want to make three observations and arguments: I will first contend that given the breadth of the terms in use here, we should not seek precise definitions but rather be mindful of contexts and distinctions. Considering a few examples of how liberalism has played out in the South, we realize that there are various forms of liberal constitutionalism and that there is no Western ownership of This is a slightly modified version of a lecture given at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at Oxford University, UK, in March 2022. I am grateful for comments by Tarunabh Khaitan, Theunis Roux, G autam Bhatia, Maxim Bbnnemann Kate O'Regan and Renata Uitz. I-CON (2022), Vol. 20 No. 1, 1-12 https://doi.org/10.1093/icon/moac035