Reimagining digital constitutionalism

Digital constitutionalism has been in vogue in recent years. A series of journal articles, edited collections and monographs that front the catch term have mushroomed. This has, in turn, inspired a growing body of critical scholarship that questions the normative and theoretical coherence as well as epistemic value of digital constitutionalism. Critics deplore the use of the age-old notion of constitutionalism to describe what they consider to be mere regulatory and self-regulatory initiatives which do not meet its well-established core normative minimums. In casting digital constitutionalism in this light, critics present it as a project driven primarily or hijacked by private sector actors, namely big digital platforms. This article seeks to challenge and bring some nuance to such recent sharp criticisms of digital constitutionalism. By positioning its origins and evolution in the digital bill of rights movement, it makes the case for reimagining digital constitutionalism as a discourse. The article thus hopes to rehabilitate and clarify the role and epistemic value of digital constitutionalism as a discourse that is an inchoate, gradualist and fundamentally hortatory. In a novel approach, it argues that framing digital constitutionalism as a discourse depicts accurately its ontological and normative dimensions but also attends to the concerns of its detractors.