DLDG - Week 2: Decolonial Constitutionalism

The paper proposes an understanding of decolonial constitutionalism that accounts for the history of slavery, colonialism and the racial capitalism not only as historical injustices but as constitutive forces of power, knowledge and being. The 1661 Barbados Slave Code as a “slave constitution” institutionalized racialized violence in the slave society to render the Black human as non-human through the law. The paper critiques the coloniality of Independence Caribbean constitutions and challenges the reformist approaches to decolonial constitutionalism that fail to disrupt this coloniality. Employing (Charles W Mills use of) the creole concept of smadditizin’– the struggle for recognition of personhood where it was denied because of race – the paper advocates for a re-founding of Caribbean constitutions. This re-founding must center the Caribbean person as “somebody” (smaddy), as individual and collective agents of their own liberation. The paper therefore envisages decolonial constitutionalism as a transformative project to create a new blueprint for the way of life of a political community, that is, a constitution that affirms the sovereignty of the people. Decolonial constitutionalism is not merely legal reform but must be an ontological rupture grounded in Caribbean-centered epistemologies.

• Albert, Richard ‘Decolonial Constitutionalism’ (2025) 25(2) Chicago Journal of International Law
• Barrow-Giles, Cynthia, and Ronnie Yearwood. 2023. “Mandatory Constitutional Referendums in Commonwealth Caribbean Constitutions: Placing ‘People’ at the Centre of the Constitution?” King’s Law Journal 34, no. 2: 215–37.
• Beckles, Hilary McD. 2016. The First Black Slave Society: Britain’s “Barbarity Time” in Barbados, 1636–1876. University of the West Indies Press.
• Collis-Buthelezi, Victoria and Aaron Kamugisha, eds., 2024. The Caribbean Race Reader: From Colonialism to Anticolonial Thought (Cambridge: Polity Press)
• Fanon, Frantz. 1963. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by Constance Farrington. Grove.
• Fanon, Frantz. (1952) 1986. Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by Charles Lam Markmann. Pluto.
• Maldonado-Torres, Nelson. 2007. “On the Coloniality of Being: Contributions to the Development of a Concept.” Cultural Studies 21, nos. 2–3, 240–70.
• McIntosh, Simeon C. R. 1997. “Constitutional Reform and the Quest for a West Indian Hermeneutics.” Caribbean Law Review 7, no. 1: 1-160.
• McIntosh, Simeon C. R. 2002. Caribbean Constitutional Reform: Rethinking the West Indian Polity. Caribbean Law.
• McIntosh, Simeon C. R. 2005. Fundamental Rights and Democratic Governance: Essays in Caribbean Jurisprudence. (Caribbean Law).
• Mills, Charles W. 1997b. “Smadditizin.” Caribbean Quarterly 43, no. 2: 54–68.
• Mills, Charles W. 2010. “‘Smadditizin’: For Rex Nettleford.” In Radical Theory, Caribbean Reality: Race, Class, and Social Domination. University of the West Indies Press.
• Yearwood, Ronnie. 2022. “Barbados’ Transition to a Republic: ‘Republic in Name First, Constitutional Reform After,’ ‘Stuff and Nonsense!’” Journal of Parliamentary and Political Law 16: 83-103.
• Yearwood, Ronnie. 2025. “Constitutional Reform in Barbados: The Enduring Influence of Westminster?” ConstitutionNet, International Institute for Democracy, and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), January 30. <https://constitutionnet.org/news/voices/constitutional-reform-barbados-enduring-influence-westminster>
• Yearwood, Ronnie, and R. Augustin-Joseph. 2025. “Constitutional Reform in Barbados: A Failure to Dismantle Westminster.” UWI St. Augustine Law Journal 3, no. 1: 77-94
• Yearwood, Ronnie. Presentation: “Whose Stories? Decolonial Constitutionalism and the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) in Trinidad and Tobago”, at the
• University of the West Indies, St Augustine, 2nd Caribbean Court of Justice Symposium: Advancing the Case for Regionalism and Indigenous Jurisprudence, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_pCzZ7GrL8> 16 May 2025