Samantha Chariz Hamilton is one of 14 law students and early-career attorneys chosen for the 2019 Law Program of the Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE) to participate in a two-week program in Germany and Poland this summer, which uses the conduct of lawyers and judges in Nazi-occupied Europe as a way to reflect on ethics in the legal profession today.
Now in its tenth year, FASPE provides a unique historical lens to fellows in five fields (business, journalism, law, medicine and seminary) in an intensive course of study focused on contemporary ethical issues in their professions.
FASPE studies the perpetrators to emphasize the essential role of professionals and to ask how and why professionals abandon their ethical guideposts. The FASPE Law program examines the role of lawyers in the Nazi state, underscoring the reality that moral codes governing the legal profession can break down or be distorted with devastating consequences. With this historical background, the Law fellows are better positioned (and more willing) to confront contemporary issues.
“I am looking forward to interrogating the value systems of German lawyers, but more importantly, my own,” said Hamilton. “The FASPE fellowship promises to analyze history not merely from an academic perspective, but also through personal and communal introspection. I am eager to immerse myself in all that the fellowship has to offer”. After completing the FASPE fellowship, Sam will spend summer 2019 working at the American Civil Liberties Union’s national office in New York City with the Speech, Privacy, and Technology project.
*Excerpted from FASPE press release.