Continuing colonialities through epistemic silences: law schools, law studies and avenues for transformation in Germany

Abstract

ABSTRACT This contribution critiques the silences, omissions and slow reactions of German discourses regarding the deeper nuances of student-led global movements that seek to confront academic institutions’ complicity in colonial pasts and their role in perpetuating contemporary inequalities and the reinforcement of institutional and structural racism. The critique on the lack of epistemic disobedience in Germany then leads to an assessment of legal education, particularly international law studies, in order to demonstrate the complicity of this specific field as a vehicle of continuing colonialities of knowledge and power (even if unintended). Finally, the article puts forward recommendations for filling in the epistemic and pedagogical blank spaces to aid the transformation of international law studies in Germany and more generally, the global north. By so doing, it contends that the burden to decolonise legal studies, particularly international law studies, should be carried not solely by global south academic institutions but also by those in the global north, for a more united and thus effective fight against the rise of racism in Europe and beyond.