Constitutionalizing in the Anthropocene: an introduction

Constitutionalizing in the Anthropocene: an introductionThe contributions to this symposium on 'Constitutionalizing in the Anthropocene' (CitA) arise out of a workshop hosted at Tilburg Law School in December 2020 aimed at addressing the challenges that the 'Anthropocene' poses to both the conceptual foundations and practical applications of constitutional theory, and out of a subsequent series of discussions and exchanges organized by the research community at Tilburg with the same title. 1The community was established in 2019 with the aspiration of drawing together research in legal theory, environmental and constitutional law, international and European law, and regulatory theory to discuss how the rising interdisciplinary accounts of the 'Anthropocene' bring into question the very foundations of constitutionalism, legal institutions and the governance of what is now often referred to as 'more-than-human collectives'.In other words, we sought to initiate a series of discussions about the radical transformations that law ought to undergo given both its complicity in bringing about the Anthropocene and its insufficiency for responding to it.In hosting the workshop that led to the following articles, we invited scholars from legal scholarship as well as from the environmental humanities (Neyrat) and international relations (Chandler).Cross-disciplinary discussions of the Anthropocene, governance, law and politics are challenging, with divergent conceptualizations of what the 'Anthropocene' means and implies, when and how it emerged, and the (in)capacity of law to deal with its constitutive and disruptive conditions.This complexity leads to diverging accounts of the utility of (re)configuring constitutional transformations, rather than to jettisoning the urge to constitutionalize altogether.It took a great deal of effort to translate these different positions across the registers, terminologies and onto-epistemological assumptions of our various disciplines in order to converse at all.In retrospect, the exercise of convening these discussions draws into question the usefulness of disciplinarily-bounded knowledges and modes of analysis in the turn towards Anthropocene-related research.We are thus thankful to the editorial team of the Journal of Human Rights and the Environment for their patient and constructive editorial feedback as the pieces in this symposium evolved and came into conversation with each other.What follows is an eclectic yet sustained exchange on the questions which are redefining how we approach legal and governance research amid climate disorder, biodiversity collapse, oceans of waste and centuries of ongoing environmental injustice.Notwithstanding the evident need to act urgently, the contributions in this edition emphasize the importance of reflecting patiently on the deep implications that the Anthropocene poses for our fields of research and practice.