November 3, 2011 Venezuelan Law Professor Allan Brewer-Carías to Deliver Lecture on Nov. 22

Allan Brewer-Carías, a renowned Venezuelan academic, will deliver a lecture titled “The Connection Between the U.S. Independence and the Hispanic-American Independence Movements in the Context of Several Key Constitutional Law Books Published in the U.S. at the Beginning of the 19th Century.” The Nov. 22 event marks the bicentenary of the 1812 publication in London of the rare book titled “Interesting Official Documents Relating to the United Provinces of Caracas.”

The lecture will be held at the Library of Congress at noon on Tuesday, Nov. 22, in the Mumford Room, located on the sixth floor of the Library’s James Madison Memorial Building at 101 Independence Avenue, S.E. Washington, D.C. The presentation will be accompanied by a display of rare books and other items related to the founding documents of the Latin American independence movement.

Sponsored by the Law Library of Congress, the lecture is free and open to the public. Tickets are not required.

Brewer-Carías, a professor at the Central University of Venezuela since 1963, is currently an adjunct professor of law at the Columbia University School of Law in New York City.

He is vice president of the International Academy of Comparative Law (The Hague); a member of the Board of Directors of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights; and a member of the Venezuelan National Academy of Political and Social Sciences, which he served as president in 1997-1999. He is also is a partner in the law firm Baumeister & Brewer in Caracas.

Brewer-Carías is the director of the Revista de Derecho Público (Public Law Journal) of Venezuela and has published more that 140 books and more that 650 journal articles and reviews on constitutional and administrative law, political science, public administration, constitutional history and urban history. In 1981, he was awarded the National Sciences Prize of Venezuela for his achievements in the law and institutional studies.

He was the director of the Public Law Institute of the Central University of Venezuela (1978-1989), and has been a post-graduate law professor at the University of Cambridge, UK, the University of Paris II, the University of Rosario and the University Externado of Colombia in Bogotá. In Venezuela, Brewer-Carías has been senator for the Federal District, head of the Presidential Commission on Administrative Reform and minister for decentralization. In 1999, he was elected as a member of the National Constituent Assembly in Venezuela.

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