Home / Programs & Events / Kristallnacht Commemoration

Eroding the Rule of Law in the Third Reich

Featuring Cynthia Fountaine

November 10, 2025
6:30 PM
Regnier Hall Auditorium KU Edwards Campus
12610 Quivira Rd, Overland Park, KS 66213
(please note this is not at JCCC)

A fundamental tenet of the legal profession is that lawyers and judges are uniquely responsible—individually and collectively—for protecting the Rule of Law. This talk considers the failings of the legal profession in living up to that responsibility during Germany’s Third Reich. The incremental steps used by the Nazis to gain control of the German legal system—beginning as early as 1920 when the Nazi Party adopted a party platform that included a plan for a new legal system—turned the legal system on its head and destroyed the Rule of Law. By failing to uphold the integrity and independence of the profession, lawyers and judges permitted and ultimately collaborated in the subversion of the basic lawyer–client relationship and the elimination of judicial independence. As a result, while there was an elaborate facade of laws, the fundamental features of the Rule of Law no longer existed and in their place had grown an arbitrary and chaotic system leaving people without any protection from a violent, totalitarian government.

This commemoration is free and open to the public. Reservations are requested.

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On the night of November 9, 1938, hundreds of synagogues, Jewish homes, and thousands of Jewish owned businesses were destroyed across Germany and Austria. In addition to this attack on property, individuals were beaten and assaulted in their homes and nearly 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps. This violent pogrom became known as Kristallnacht — the Night of Broken Glass.

This presentation is co-sponsored by the Jewish Studies Department at the University of Kansas.

Cynthia L. Fountaine is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law at University of North Texas Dallas College of Law.  Dean Fountaine focuses her teaching and scholarship on issues relating to the powers of government and access to justice, with particular emphasis on the federal courts’ role in enforcing individual rights. Dean Fountaine was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the University of Bayreuth in Germany.

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