The most important trial of our age
occurred in a small courtroom in Dayton, Tenn.,
in the summer of 1925, when a jury was asked to decide whether a high-school biology
teacher violated a new state law that banned the teaching of evolution. Clarence Darrow,
the great defense lawyer, was co-counsel for the defendant, John Scopes. The lead
prosecutor was William Jennings Bryan, orator, fundamentalist leader and three-time
presidential nominee. Law historians say the trial has stood the test of time.
The
experts still talk about that trial, 75 years later. Why? Because it was about something
important, something that's still important -- the conflict between religion and science
and whether the two can be reconciled.