On Friday, December 9, the Law Library of Congress will commemorate Human Rights Day with a discussion on how the Miranda warning has impacted human rights in Eastern Europe.
This program will serve as the Law Library’s annual commemoration of Human Rights Day. In previous years, the Law Library has hosted a number of Human Rights Day events that highlight various aspects of human rights including Islamic Law reform, bioethics, and the rights of refugees and internally displaced persons. The United Nations has selected “Stand up for Someone’s Rights Today!” as their 2016 Human Rights Day theme.
Human Rights Day is officially observed on December 10 to commemorate the day that the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Paris on December 10, 1948. This year’s discussion also marks the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision Miranda v. Arizona, in which the court held that criminal suspects must be informed of their constitutional rights at the time of arrest and before interrogation.
The discussion will take place from 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in Room LJ-119 of the Thomas Jefferson Building and feature a distinguished panel of American and European politicians and scholars. They will specifically address how American laws have influenced human rights advances in Romania and the former Soviet Union.
Peter Roudik, director of the Global Legal Research Directorate, will moderate the discussion. The panelists will include Monica Macovei of Romania, a member of the European Parliament and former Minister of Justice; Kyle Parker, senior professional staff member of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee; Will Pomeranz, deputy director of the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies of the Woodrow Wilson Center; and Natella Boltyanskaya, Russian journalist and historian of the Soviet dissident movement.
We hope you can join us for this event! It is free and open to the public, and tickets are not required. For readers unable to join us, a member of the In Custodia Legis team will live-tweet the event via Twitter @LawLibCongress, using #HumanRightsDay.