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This essay is adapted from Gregg Jarrett’s new book, “The Trial of the Century.”
I was barely a teenager when, one summer day, I plucked a single volume off my father’s densely packed bookshelf. That seemingly random act more than five decades ago shaped the contours of my life and inspired me to pursue a legal career.
The biography told the story of the finest trial attorney who ever lived, Clarence Darrow. I admired his passion for the law, his abiding sense of justice, and his unyielding commitment to civil liberties and intellectual freedom. A fearless iconoclast, he dared to confront prevailing beliefs. He opposed the increasing demands for social and religious conformity. Often a solitary figure, Darrow battled against government intrusion on individual rights.
These revered principles were in jeopardy during Darrow’s most famous case, the 1925 Scopes “Monkey” Trial. The sobriquet was derived from an evolutionary misconception that humans evolved from monkeys or other primates. Two years ago, I was granted access to the archives of the courthouse that still stands and obtained the original trial transcript on which “The Trial of the Century” is based.
FILE – 1925: American teacher John Thomas Scopes (1900 – 1970) (2nd from L) standing in the courtroom during his trial for teaching Darwin’s Theory of Evolution in his high school science class, Dayton, Tennessee. Scopes’s case came to be known nationwide as the ‘Scopes Monkey Trial.’ (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
What I discovered is that America might be a very different place today were it not for the courage of a young schoolteacher and his intrepid defense lawyer nearly a century ago who challenged in court a popularly enacted law that sought to suffocate scientific learning and freedom of expression or thought. Historians would describe it as a titanic clash between science and religion, or evolution versus…
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