Charles (Chase) Hamilton is a 2021 J.D. candidate at the Duke University School of Law. He is principally interested in high-magnitude “existential” risks, including the impacts of various decisions in space development on humanity’s prospects for survival, the risks posed by emergent technologies and competition between nations, and potential psychological biases that impact our perception of risks. He is the Project Manager and a Team Leader for the 2020–21 Bass Connections project DeCIPHER: Going to Mars—Science, Society, and Sustainability, an interdisciplinary study on the risk tradeoffs involved in developing a human settlement on Mars. With a background in analytic philosophy, he also is interested in ethical and epistemological issues implicated by various perspectives on risk.

Before Duke, Chase leveraged his understanding of risk as a debate coach to help students and clients analyze policy issues and tradeoffs. He is a pledged member of Giving What We Can and longtime supporter of the effective altruism movement which advocates using evidence and reasoning to best help others, including by comparing the relative importance of different causes and the most cost-effective ways of affecting them.

After graduation, Chase will work in Dallas as an associate for Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP in its litigation practice group and on matters related to space development.