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Conclusion
The 1925 trial of John T. Scopes for the teaching of evolution in a Tennessee public school in opposition to the Butler Law is most remembered for the spectacle it became and the way in which it pitted religion and science against one another. At the heart of the trial, however, was not the question of the legitimacy of Darwin’s evolution theory or the validity of the Bible. The heart of the trial can be summed up nicely in the closing argument that William Jennings Bryan was never allowed to give, but which he wrote down and which was published after his death. The question that the Scopes trial was suppose to answer was “Who shall control our public schools?”[1] To Bryan, who believed whole-heartedly in majority rule the answer was easy, the schools should be governed by the legislature, for the legislature is a representation of the people, and it derives is “just powers from the consent” of the people.[2] This majoritarian view did not still well with the ACLU or its minority following who had witnessed the way in which majority rule had trampled over minority rights during World War II. As famous as the Scopes Trial is for its presentation of the creationism vs. evolution debate, its greater legacy to the American legal system and American history was the way in which it represented the majority rule vs. minority rights debate of the 1920’s.
[1] William Jennings Bryan and Mary Baird Bryan. The Memoirs of William Jennings Bryan (Philadelphia, PA: The United Publishers of America, 1925), 526.
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