Harvard Law School Discusses Human Rights at Conference

European human rights scholars and Harvard professors met Monday at Harvard Law School’s Milstein Conference Center to discuss the divergent European and American perspectives on human rights.

Entitled "Divided by a Common Heritage: Human Rights in Europe and the United States," the conference featured a number of international speakers who talked about the fundamental differences that separate two entities’ outlooks on the issue.

Addressing the seemingly paradoxical title of the conference, Law School Lecturer and organizer of the event Mindy J. Roseman explained that the name was borrowed from Winston Churchill, who coined the phrase, "Two nations divided by a common language."

Speaking at the event’s introductory panel, "Does Context Matter? How and Why Europe and the U.S. Differ on Human Rights," former Deputy Secretary General of the Council of Europe Maud de Boer-Buquicchio said that she thought the First Amendment offered more protection to free speech than did the European Convention on Human Rights, which includes more limitations to speech.

Law School professor emeritus Frank I. Michelman offered a contrasting view of the difference with a metaphor.

"In the cathedral of American constitutional law, human rights occupy the place of a flying buttress," Michelman said.

He added that Constitutional rights, not human rights, take precedence in our domestic courts, unlike in Europe where human rights can be used directly in judicial arguments.

The conference included several other panels, each focusing on different aspects of human rights.

Leading a panel on racial discrimination, Sonja Licht, director of the Belgrade Fund for Political Excellence in Serbia, said that ethnic minorities in Europe, including immigrants from the Middle East and the Roma people of Central and Eastern Europe, currently face serious discrimination and violence.

"Interestingly enough, Roma women face even more discrimination," she said. "They are kind of the lowest on the food chain."

Licht also added that anti-Semitism still remains a serious problem throughout Europe, something she said she has experienced personally. "One of the most famous fascist websites names me as the second most dangerous Jew in Serbia," she said.

A separate panel at the conference focused on privacy in the age of technology.

Georgetown Law School professor Julie E. Cohen ’86 said that the "unaccountable power" of technology could prove dangerous to modern human rights.

"We shouldn’t be worried about an Orwellian type of surveillance; we should be worried about a Western, democratic form of surveillance, which is seen as more efficient and as innovation," she said.

Luise Druke, a visiting scholar in the audience, said she found the discussion on human rights and cyberspace one of the most interesting topics of the day. "On one hand [the Internet] may help to diffuse power, but on the other hand it might help to control it," she said.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

CORRECTION: Sept. 27, 2013

A statement and a quotation in an earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to the Roma people of Central and Eastern Europe as Romans.