Summary of Scopes Trial
...e Butler law indicated that it is illegal to lecture the theory of evolution and the instructors were required to teach bible and to interpret how god create the human beings. A partial group of teachers felt that academic freedom and integrity was stake. The teachers believed that to teach bible and to interpret how god create the human beings are preacher’s job; that is the line to separate between the church and the school. A twenty-four years old science teacher and football coach John Thomas Scopes decided that he would teach the class about the theory of evolution. Although he knew that would be arrested, Scopes still taught the class. Scopes now is known, the most important trials in American history. Scopes was arrested, unsurprisingly, for violating the Butler Law. At the trial, William Jennings Bryan acted as prosecutor. The champion of the anti-evolution forces at the Scopes trial, William Jennings Bryan, “expressed concern only about the teaching of human evolution” (p. 8—in fact the statute being challenged at the trial only concerned human evolution). World famous criminal defense lawyer Clarence Darrow defended John Scopes. The trial raged on for days. The judge did not allow any of Darrow's scientists to testify and public emotion in the Bible Belt was against Scopes. Darrow closed the case for the defense without a final summation. Under Tennessee law, when the defense waived its right to make a closing speech, the prosecution was also barred from summing up its case. Scopes himself never testified, as there was never a legal issue as to whether he had taught evolution. (It s...