Postcolonial Law: Autochthonous Illusions, or Rupturing the Shackles of British Acculturation?

Prof. Kevin Aquilina, former Dean of the Faculty of Laws of the University of Malta, has published an original pioneering study on Maltese Postcolonial Public Law in the Għaqda Studenti tal-Liġi’s peer-reviewed journal Id-Dritt, Volume XXXVI, 2026, pp. 92-115.

This paper restricts its focus on Malta’s postcolonialism in relation to one sector of society – Public Law – and argues that since the inception of British colonialism in Malta in 1800, following Malta’s independence in 1964, and up to the present moment in time, British acculturation has taken its toll in this sector of Maltese society to such an extent that such sector in the republican state is very much of a mirror image of the colonial imprint.

After defining key terms such as “colonialism”, “post-colonialism”, “postcolonialism”, and “British acculturation” for the purposes of this paper, a distinction is drawn between British postcolonialism, on the one hand, and other forms of post-colonialism extant in Malta, on the other, leading to the finding that although Malta is both post-colonial and postcolonial in nature, it is the latter that has gained the upper hand both during Malta’s British colonial times and following Malta’s independence mainly because Britain was Malta’s last coloniser and applied a policy of acculturation in Malta at least in the sector of society surveyed that has, during the colonial and postcolonial periods ranging from 1800 to date, nearly eradicated from Malta the remnants of European continental Public Law.

The work then identifies the advantages and disadvantages of postcolonialism in Malta, the rejection of recourse to the option of autochthony that was available to the Maltese nation post-independence but never availed of, and the meaning of, and ingredients for, autochthony should the Mediterranean state chose in the future to cross this bridge.

It further attempts to understand why the Mediterranean state has, instead of pursuing the autochthony road, had recourse to a servile colonial mentality post-independence that did not detach it completely from the former coloniser’s Public Law.

This study can be downloaded from the University of Malta’s Library institutional open access repository (OAR).