John T. Scopes being brought into
court, on trial for teaching evolution
To historians and movie viewers alike, it might often seem like the course of The United States is decided in the court room. On the big and small screen the climax of too many films and television shows to count is the jury bringing in the verdict. And in real life, there’s hardly a country in the world where the judicial branch has such power to legislate from the bench.
One such famous trial was the 1925 “Scopes Monkey Trial” in Dayton, Tennessee, where John T. Scopes, a substitute science teacher, was put on trial for teaching his students Darwin‘s theory of evolution, to the chagrin of the good God-fearing folks of the town. It was an epic confrontation between lawyers William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow (defending John T. Scopes). It was immortalised in the Broadway play “Inherit the Wind”, which was later adapted for the screen a number of times, most notably the 1960 version with Spencer Tracy and Fredric March playing the protagonists.
In most people’s mind the trial marked the victory of science over religious dogma. It is all too easy to forget that Scopes actually was found guilty as charged. It was society that changed, not the law that changed society. It’s a fact well worth keeping in mind today, as evolution finds itself in the US courts once again.
Last year a federal judge barred the Dover Area School District in Pennsylvania from teaching “intelligent design” in biology class, saying the concept was creationism in disguise, and as such was contrary to the separation of church and state.
Students in front of Dover High SchoolU.S. District Judge John E. Jones delivered a stinging attack on the Dover Area School Board, saying its first-in-the-nation decision in October 2004 to insert intelligent design into the science curriculum violates the constitutional separation of church and state.
The ruling was a major setback to the intelligent design movement, which is also waging battles in Georgia and Kansas. Intelligent design holds that living organisms are so complex that they must have been created by some kind of higher force.
Jones decried the “breathtaking inanity” of the Dover policy and accused several board members of lying to conceal their true motive, which he said was to promote religion.
It might seem like a final vindication of evolution. But the fact that the case, which is sure to be followed by many others, was raised at all, might just as well be seen as a sign that public opinion is on the march again, and once again is headed in the opposite direction of the court.
Be that as it may, Paramount has hired Ronald Harwood, who won an Oscar in 2003 for his script for “The Pianist” and has just finished a script based on the Gabriel García Márquez novel “Love in the Time of Cholera”, to write a screenplay for a movie based on the Dover trial.
“It has turned out to be the test case for the teaching of evolution in high school curriculums across the country, and it speaks directly to the key schism between the red and blue states,” producer Linda Obst told Variety (subscription required).