Complete transcript of the controversial "Scopes Monkey Trial" which tested the law that made it illegal for public school teachers in Tennessee to teach Charles Darwin's theory of evolution The complete transcript of the 1925 case of the State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, a 24-year old high school teacher accused of violating the Butler Act, which had passed in Tennessee on March 21, 1925, forbidding the teaching, in any state-funded educational establishment, of "any theory that denies the story of the divine creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals." The law made it. Perhaps the first modern media event, the trial attracted enormous national and international attention to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee during the sweltering July of 1925. A star-studded cast of trial attorneys included the great orator and three time Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan and the brilliant trial lawyer and champion of the downtrodden, Clarence Darrow, among others. The climax of the trial came on the seventh day when the defense put the senior Bryan on the stand as an expert on the Bible and he was ruthlessly interrogated by Darrow. As a milestone in the American struggle between modernity and the forces of Protestant fundamentalism, and a vivid manifestation of the clash between two valid principles-academic freedom and democratic control of the public schools-the Scopes case has tremendous historical significance. Scopes was found guilty, and paid a fine of $100. and costs. At the sentencing, he told the Judge, "I feel that I have been convicted of violating an unjust statute. I will continue in the future, as I have in the past, to oppose this law in any way I can. Any other action would be in violation of my ideal of academic freedom-that is, to teach the truth as guaranteed in our Constitution, of personal and religious freedom. I think the fine is unjust." William Jennings Bryan died a few days after the trial ended. Clarence Darrow moved on to other cases, most notably the Sweet case in Detroit in 1926 and his last trial, the Massie trial in Honolulu in 1931. Illustrated with photographs from the trial. This edition also includes statements by scientists entered at the defense's request, and the text of a lengthy concluding speech that Bryan prepared but never delivered. Clarence Darrow [1857-1938] was a well-known trial lawyer renowned for his progressive sympathies and successful work for labor and the poor. He achieved fame for his defense of Leopold and Loeb in 1924, the Massie trial in 1931 and this, his most famous, defense of John Scopes in 1925-the only time Darrow ever volunteered his services in a case, a case in which he saw education "in danger from the source that always hampered it-religious fanaticism."

A recreation of Clarence Darrow's 1912 trial for jury tampering provides a study of the legal system in Los Angeles at the turn of the century and provides detailed portraits of the key personalities involved in the case

On April 15, 1920, Parmenter, a paymaster, and Berardelli, his guard, were fired upon and killed. Sacco and Vanzetti were charged on May 5, 1920, with the crime of the murders, were indicted on September 14, 1920, and put to trial May 31, 1921, at Dedham, Norfolk County, Massachusetts. compare pages [3]-8.

For as long as accuser and accused have faced each other in public, criminal trials have been establishing far more than who did what to whom–and in this fascinating book, Sadakat Kadri surveys four thousand years of courtroom drama. A brilliantly engaging writer, Kadri journeys from the silence of ancient Egypt’s Hall of the Dead to the clamor of twenty-first-century Hollywood to show how emotion and fear have inspired Western notions of justice–and the extent to which they still riddle its trials today. He explains, for example, how the jury emerged in medieval England from trials by fire and water, in which validations of vengeance were presumed to be divinely supervised, and how delusions identical to those that once sent witches to the stake were revived as accusations of Satanic child abuse during the 1980s. Lifting the lid on a particularly bizarre niche of legal history, Kadri tells how European lawyers once prosecuted animals, objects, and corpses–and argues that the same instinctive urge to punish is still apparent when a child or mentally ill defendant is accused of sufficiently heinous crimes. But Kadri’s history is about aspiration as well as ignorance. He shows how principles such as the right to silence and the right to confront witnesses, hallmarks of due process guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, were derived from the Bible by twelfth-century monks. He tells of show trials from Tudor England to Stalin’s Soviet Union, but contends that “no-trials,” in Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere, are just as repugnant to Western traditions of justice and fairness. With governments everywhere eroding legal protections in the name of an indefinite war on terror, Kadri’s analysis could hardly be timelier. At once encyclopedic and entertaining, comprehensive and colorful, The Trial rewards curiosity and an appreciation of the absurd but tackles as well questions that are profound. Who has the right to judge, and why? What did past civilizations hope to achieve through scapegoats and sacrifices–and to what extent are defendants still made to bear the sins of society at large? Kadri addresses such themes through scores of meticulously researched stories, all told with the verve and wit that won him one of Britain’s most prestigious travel-writing awards–and in doing so, he has created a masterpiece of popular history.

The classic bestseller from a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist that tells the compelling true story of one man's fight for the right to legal counsel for every defendent. A history of the landmark case of Clarence Earl Gideon's fight for the right to legal counsel. Notes, table of cases, index. The classic backlist bestseller. More than 800,000 sold since its first pub date of 1964.

Most things you ‘know’ about science and religion are myths or half-truths that grew up in the last years of the nineteenth century and remain widespread today. ‘A deeply researched history of the interplay between the two ways of understanding the world.’ ECONOMIST, BEST BOOKS OF 2023 The true history of science and religion is a human one. It’s about the role of religion in inspiring, and strangling, science before the scientific revolution. It’s about the sincere but eccentric faith and the quiet, creeping doubts of the most brilliant scientists in history – Galileo, Newton, Faraday, Darwin, Maxwell, Einstein. Above all it’s about the question of what it means to be human and who gets to say – a question that is more urgent in the twenty-first century than ever before. From eighth-century Baghdad to the frontiers of AI today, via medieval Europe, nineteenth-century India and Soviet Russia, Magisteria sheds new light on this complex historical landscape. Rejecting the thesis that science and religion are inevitably at war, Nicholas Spencer illuminates a compelling and troubled relationship that has definitively shaped human history.

A look at a 1906 Supreme Court decision that transformed justice in America examines the case of Ed Johnson, an African American man accused of raping a white woman, his lynching, and the response of the Supreme Court.

A classic work of American theatre, based on the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, which pitted Clarence Darrow against William Jennings Bryan in defense of a schoolteacher accused of teaching the theory of evolution The accused was a slight, frightened man who had deliberately broken the law. His trial was a Roman circus. The chief gladiators were two great legal giants of the century. Like two bull elephants locked in mortal combat, they bellowed and roared imprecations and abuse. The spectators sat uneasily in the sweltering heat with murder in their hearts, barely able to restrain themselves. At stake was the freedom of every American. One of the most moving and meaningful plays of our generation. Praise for Inherit the Wind "A tidal wave of a drama."—New York World-Telegram And Sun “Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee were classic Broadway scribes who knew how to crank out serious plays for thinking Americans. . . . Inherit the Wind is a perpetually prescient courtroom battle over the legality of teaching evolution. . . . We’re still arguing this case–all the way to the White House.”—Chicago Tribune “Powerful . . . a crackling good courtroom play . . . [that] provides two of the juiciest roles in American theater.”—Copley News Service “[This] historical drama . . . deserves respect.”—The Columbus Dispatch