Scopes process

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Scopes Trial , also called Scopes Monkey Trial ( Scopes monkey trial ) and short "monkey trial" was known to be a trial before the Criminal Court in Dayton , Tennessee , in which the teacher John T. Scopes in 1925 to 100 US dollars fine was convicted he had taught Darwin's theory of evolution in public schools. The trial became a test case for a new law passed by the Tennessee state parliament that year. After that, it was forbidden in the US state to deal with theories in school lessons that contradict the Bible's account of creation about the origin of man .

prehistory

John Thomas Scopes (1925)

After the First World War , a conservative Christian movement that defined itself as Fundamentals had gained considerable influence in the United States. This movement, which in today's terms is more evangelicalism than fundamentalism, rejected the theory of evolution and took the view that the Bible should be understood literally with regard to creation . The movement's influence went far enough that laws were passed in the states of Florida , Oklahoma, and Tennessee prohibiting the teaching of attitudes in public schools that departed from biblical theory of creation. The law ( Butler Act ) passed in Tennessee on March 13, 1925 was the only one that contained a criminal law provision. The American Civil Liberties Union offered to pay the legal costs for anyone who would be charged under this law.

A group of Dayton, Tennessee businesspeople believed a lawsuit on the matter would help promote their city. They persuaded biology teacher John T. Scopes to be charged with this law. Scopes taught the theory of evolution in a class at Rhea County High School in April 1925 on the basis of the textbook " Civic Biology " by George William Hunter, which was not prohibited by the state of Tennessee . An initiated citizen then filed a complaint.

The process

The process caused quite a stir. Around 120 journalists signed up to follow the process. Around 100 preachers from various sects and churches also went to Dayton to preach there. At the beginning of the trial, there was no longer any accommodation available in the city. The city of Dayton had 1,800 residents, with an estimated 5,000 residents at the height of the trial. Overall, the place resembled a fair, at which, among other things, trained chimpanzees were shown.

The trial was to be chaired by Judge John T. Raulston , a deeply religious man. The prosecution in the process was represented by, among others, the Attorney General of the State of Tennessee, Frank M. Thompson , and was assisted by the politician William Jennings Bryan , one of the main proponents of fundamentalism. Scopes should be defended in the proceedings by the well-known New York lawyers Arthur Garfield Hays , Dudley Field Malone and the lawyer Clarence Darrow from Chicago . The main opponents in the process were Scopes' attorney Darrow and the assistant prosecutor, William Jennings Bryan. The defense took the position that the law contradicted the constitutional separation of church and state and freedom of religion . She also claimed that the theory of evolution did not contradict the Bible . For the latter, they wanted to call on a large number of scientists as experts , who were also in or around Dayton for this purpose.

Process flow

On July 10, 1925, the process began with a selection made by the jury . The jury box would eventually consist of six Baptists , four Methodists , one Campbellite Disciples of Christ, and one non-Church individual. The law and the first chapter of the book of Genesis were read to the jury . The jury was instructed by the presiding judge that they did not have to rule on the correctness of the law, but only on whether Scopes had broken the law.

On the second day of the trial, July 13, the defense moved that the Butler Act be determined to violate the United States Constitution and the Constitution of the State of Tennessee. The jury was then dismissed for the time being. Both sides then negotiated the constitutionality of the law. During the negotiations, on July 14, the defense for the first time reprimanded the judge's habit of opening the respective negotiations with the prayer of a clergyman. The reason for the complaint was that prayer influences the outcome of the process, which also deals with the relationship between science and religion. John T. Raulston rejected the complaint, which was also repeated in the course of the trial. He just wanted the clergy to take turns. At the same time, a news agency reported that Raulston intended to reject the objection that the law was not constitutional. The judge then ordered an investigation because he suspected that the press had obtained this information illegally, thereby disregarding the dignity of the court. It turned out that a young journalist could infer the information from the judge himself. Raulston finally dismissed the defense’s motion. He justifies this by stating that the provision to teach the biblical creation story in public schools does not dictate to anyone what religious conviction they should follow. The state of Tennessee is also not forcing anyone to go to school.

On July 15, the proceedings were continued before the jury and the charges brought forward. Then the principal and two students were questioned as witnesses as to whether Scopes had taught the theory of evolution, which the witnesses confirm. On the part of the defense, the first expert for the compatibility of biblical representations with scientific knowledge, the professor of zoology at Johns Hopkins University Maynard Metcalf , was called. The public prosecutor's office requested that the expert not be admitted as his testimony was irrelevant to the proceedings. This was followed by a day of negotiations on July 16, on which both sides presented their positions on the need to hear experts. For the prosecution, Bryan put forward the argument that the scientists only represent their theory, in which case it is not the different theories that matter, but the law. The defense point of view was mainly put forward by Dudley Field Malone. Malone initially protested against the accusation of not being religious because he was a Christian for his part (Malone, as a Catholic, did not take the book of Genesis literally and had no problems with an evolution theory). Then he explained that the statements in the Bible were partly allegorical, partly historical, and partly moral. When properly understood, the Bible does not contradict scientific knowledge. It is therefore also a question of scientific understanding. On July 17, the presiding judge decided not to admit experts. This removed the two main points of the defense strategy - the unconstitutionality of the law and the attack from the scientific side. When Darrow then questioned the neutrality of the court, he was threatened with a conviction for disregard of the court, but he was able to avoid this by apologizing the following day.

Darrow then called Attorney General Bryan to the stand. He should be heard on the question of what the Bible says and the age of the earth. Although the judge advised him that he did not have to testify and that the other prosecutors were against the testimony, Bryan allowed himself to be cross-examined. That cross-examination, in which Bryan got caught up in contradictions, became the culmination of the trial and went down in history.

On July 21, Scopes was fined $ 100, but was later acquitted by the Tennessee Supreme Court for a formal error.

Last but not least, the dramatic cross-examination contributed to the national awareness of the process, which became the model for a play and several films. The journalist Henry L. Mencken from the Baltimore Sun also stood out. The trial was viewed as an embarrassment for the fundamentalists, especially in the north of the United States, while those, who were particularly strong in the south, viewed Bryan, who died a few days after the end of the trial, as a martyr and saw themselves strengthened in their position. No further litigation took place in the matter, but similar bills were passed in many other states, with success in Mississippi and Arkansas. The underlying law in Tennessee was repealed in 1967.

Commemoration

The Rhea County Courthouse (2006)

Because of the process, the Rhea County Courthouse was designated a National Historic Landmark from 1891 in 1976 . Since 1979, Dayton has had its own museum dedicated to the case, the Scopes Trial Museum .

Impact history

The play Inherit the Wind (1955) by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee is based loosely on the Scopes trial . This piece, with a clear sideways glance at the McCarthy era , was enthusiastically received by critics and audiences and won the Donaldson Award and numerous other prizes. In 1960 it was filmed by Stanley Kramer with Spencer Tracy (Darrow, here: Drummond), Fredric March (Bryan, here: Brady) and Gene Kelly (Mencken, here: Hornbeck) (German: Who sows the wind ). The film is widely used in the classroom of American public schools. Several remakes document the continuing interest: 1988 with Jason Robards and Kirk Douglas , 1999 with Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott .

The episode God against Lisa Simpson ( English The Monkey Suit ) from the 17th season of the animated series The Simpsons refers to the Scopes trial.

See also

literature

  • Sheldon Norman Grebstein (Ed.): Monkey Trial. The State of Tennessee vs. John Thomas Scopes (= Houghton Mifflin Research Series. No. 4, ZDB -ID 2247162-5 ). Houghton Mifflin, Boston MA 1960.
  • Maximilian Jacta : Famous Criminal Trials Volume 1: America (I). Goldmann Verlag, Munich 1964.
  • Lyon Sprague de Camp: The Great Monkey Trial. Doubleday, Garden City NY 1968.
  • Edward J. Larson : Summer for the Gods. The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion. BasicBooks, New York NY 1997, ISBN 0-465-07509-6 ( 1998 Pulitzer Prize for historical work).
  • Walther Skaupy: The "Monkey Trial". Human descent in court. In: Walther Skaupy: Great processes in world history. Emil Vollmer Verlag, Essen 1998, ISBN 3-88851-277-8 , pp. 250-270.
  • Constance Areson Clark: God - or Gorilla. Images of Evolution in the Jazz Age. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore MD 2008, ISBN 978-0-8018-8825-0 .
  • Heinrich Zankl : American ape trial - The evolution theory in court . in: Heinrich Zankl: Science in cross-examination . Scientific Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2012. pp. 9–16. ISBN 9783534237715

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Legal text ( Memento of May 20, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
  2. ↑ Text of the textbook ( Memento of November 4, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
  3. ^ A b c Richard M. Cornelius: World's Most Famous Court Trial. In: www.bryan.edu. Archived from the original on June 9, 2014 ; accessed on October 22, 2016 (English).
  4. ↑ Characterization of the judge ( Memento from May 9, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Jill Lepore: These Truths: A History of the United States of America . CH Beck, 2019, ISBN 978-3-406-73989-7 , pp. 509-510 .
  6. ↑ Wired : July 21, 1925: Scopes 'Monkey Trial' Ends With Guilty Verdict , July 21, 2011