Miranda Rights Warnings Project

IllinoisTech Design & Law Students from Miranda Warning Project

Over the spring and summer of 2018, Illinois Tech contributed to a collaborative project — involving the ABA Center for Innovation, the IIT Institute of Design, IIT’s Computer Science program and a Chicago-Kent student — that created an innovative new solution to convey Miranda warnings consistently and accurately across language divisions.

Since Miranda warnings started being used routinely more than 50 years ago, after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Miranda v. Arizona, no one has formally made uniform translations available to ensure that Miranda rights are being communicated accurately to non-English speakers. The ABA’s Hispanic Commission took on the project of creating a solution for Spanish speakers, and their work led to this project.

Dean Krent explains the premise of the project in the video below:

“We need to make sure that the individual understands their constitutional rights: constitutional rights to have an attorney, constitutional rights not to respond to any question that may incriminate them. But how do you do that if the individual [doesn’t understand] English? The solution here, low-tech as it is, can be embraced by police organizations across the country in a way that will make a real difference.”

— Harold Krent

VIDEO:

Law + Design

In July 2017, Associate Dean Hugh Musick of the Institute of Design shared the process behind the project at the JandersDean conference hosted at Chicago-Kent and sponsored by The Law Lab:

“It’s a very exciting opportunity. We’re able to take a law student who’s sitting right here out into the field and speak with law enforcement officers to understand what some of those challenges are for them. But our ultimate goal is to make sure that the Miranda warning is delivered in the way that it needs to be, safely.”

— Hugh Musick

Chicago-Kent’s Jun Qiu ’18 was involved in the project and shared a preview of it at Chicago-Kent’s “25 at 565” celebration of the law school building’s 25th anniversary:

Miranda Warnings Project Pilot

The project was announced publicly in New Orleans in 2018 as a pilot:

PODCAST:

Hear from more of the lawyers and design team involved in the project in this Legal Talk Network podcast:

Author: Emily Barney

Technology Training & Marketing Librarian

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