Digital constitutionalism: the (un)expected guest

Abstract

Is there a digital constitutionalism? This is a question whose answer is it still in a construction process in the national and foreign doctrine. This text purpose is to discuss critically the imprecisions surrounding the expression “digital constitutionalism”, proposing a reflection concerning the sense that the “digital” apparatus gives to the notion of “constitucionalism”. Would the adjective have become more relevant than the substantive itself? To confront this regard, after a problematization (section I), the origins of the constitutionalism phenomenon and its forms of manifestation are retrieved (section II). From that, is speculated the possibility of a technical revolution constitute a constitutional moment (section III) in following the meanings concerning digital constitutionalism (section IV). As a conclusion, always provisional, it points out the theoretical fragility involving the concept and its application, whose reflexes may affect the paradigm of democratic constitutionalism section V). Ending with a resort to fantastic literature to metaphorically illustrate the critic formulated to the digital constitutionalism (section IV). The used methodological approach is analytic-descriptive, exiting in bibliographic investigation in an exploratory bias. This essay is the partial result of a deployment from the research project entitled “The normativity and it’s form of expression: different languages, other knowledges, new approaches”. In the extent of the technological innovations in the constitutional state research group linked to the Univel.