(This is an excellent piece written by the famed attorney ...)
This is an excellent piece written by the famed attorney Clarence S. Darrow. In it he discusses the violation of the first amendment rights of those people who spoke out against entry into war against Germany during World War One.
(Clarence Darrow in the Courtroom; Attorney for the Damned...)
Clarence Darrow in the Courtroom; Attorney for the Damned collects Darrow’s most influential summations and supplements them with scene-setting explanations and comprehensive notes by Arthur Weinberg.
Clarence Seward Darrow was an American labor and criminal lawyer, and writer of the early 20th century. He stood up for many then-unpopular causes, fought against the death penalty, for trade unions, against the prohibition of alcohol, and for the teaching of the theory of evolution in school science classes.
Background
Clarence Seward Darrow was born on April 18, 1857, in Kinsman, Ohio, United States, to Amirus and Emily Darrow. He was introduced early to the life of the dissenter, for his father, after completing studies at a Unitarian seminary, had lost his faith and had become an agnostic living within a community of religious believers. Furthermore, the Darrows were Democrats in a Republican locale.
Education
Darrow attended Allegheny College and studied law at the University of Michigan Law School, but finished his official preparation for practice by reading in a law office.
Darrow began his career as a country lawyer in Ohio, but by 1887 he had moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he became allied with Cook County judge John P. Altgeld, a noted reformer. His first big case for labor came in 1893, when he defended famed socialist Eugene V. Debs against charges of criminal conspiracy and contempt of a federal injunction for his support of striking railway workers; Darrow fought through an aborted trial until the Pullman company dropped the case. His subsequent work on behalf of Wisconsin’s Woodworkers’ Union in the Kidd case led to the eventual elimination of using conspiracy law against labor unions.
Darrow’s fame grew. In 1896 he ran for a spot on the third-party Democratic-Populist ticket led by William Jennings Bryan. He suffered a temporary set-back in 1912, when he himself was accused of bribing a juror and tried, but he was acquitted with the aid of fellow attorney Earl Rogers. Darrow served as attorney for more left-wing organizations, and by the early 1920s he had defended leaders of the Communist Labor party against charges of attempting to overthrow the government. In that particular instance, he lost. In 1924, he defended notorious thrill-killers Nathan Leopold, Jr., and Richard Loeb. Their guilt in murdering a thirteen year old to see if they could do it without suffering emotionally was known, but Darrow managed to win life in prison rather than the death penalty by asserting temporary insanity on the part of his clients. Parts of his famous summation in this case have been used by opponents of the death penalty ever since.
The following year found Darrow in Tennessee, doing battle with his old colleague Bryan—a Christian fundamentalist - over whether or not Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution should be taught in United States public schools. Technically, Darrow lost the case for his client, schoolteacher John L. Scopes, but his arguments paved the way for future education policy. The Scopes trial was later the basis for a motion picture titled Inherit the Wind. Darrow’s next major case was the murder trial of Dr. Ossian Sweet and his brother. He successfully defended two African American men who lived in a white Detroit, Michigan, neighborhood. These men shot a member of a white mob that was attempting to drive their family out of its home. During the 1930s Darrow served on a committee for President Franklin D. Roosevelt that investigated the National Recovery Adminstration’s codes, which were predominantly anti-labor. He also spent most of that decade continuing his long-time practice of participating in public lectures and debates.
In addition to his stellar career as an attorney and lecturer, Darrow wrote a number of books during his lifetime. Some, of course, were primarily printed transcripts of his great legal cases, but his ouevre also included novels, literary criticism, treatises on controversial issues, and an autobiography. Darrow’s first publication was a volume of literary criticism titled A Persian Pearl, which saw print in 1899. In this volume, he considered the works of literary figures as diverse as Omar Khayyam and Walt Whitman. As in his other writings, he managed to insert his socialist views into the discussion.
Darrow’s first novel, Farmington (1904), is a celebration of rural, populist values. In his next, An Eye for on Eye (1905), Darrow used first-person protagonist Jim Jackson to tell the tale of Jackson’s inevitable descent into a life of crime. At the same time, Darrow provided readers with a fictional example of his belief that crime results not from the evil of individuals, but rather from the unequal circumstances inherent in our society.
Another important written effort by Darrow is Crime: Its Causes and Treatment (1922). Discussing in essay the same theme of An Eye for an Eye, Darrow set forth in Crime both his theory of crime—that it has societal rather than individual causes—and his ideas for the rehabilitation of those society calls criminal. Rather than encouraging criminals to embrace the floral code suggested by most American religions, Darrow felt that they should be educated to a much greater degree than previously and provided with methods through which to control their antisocial impulses. Though reviews were mixed in their opinions about Crime, most praised Darrow’s book.
In 1927 Darrow collaborated with Victor S. Yarros on Prohibition Mania: A Reply to Professor Irving Fisher and Others. Fisher was one of the day’s leading advocates of prohibition, in which the drinking of alcoholic beverages was outlawed by an amendment to the United States Constitution during the 1920s. The amendment, of course, was eventually repealed. Darrow and his writing partner were against prohibition and attack Fisher’s arguments in favor of it in their book, pointing out what they felt to be many fallacies that Fisher had utilized in his own arguments on behalf of the idea. For the most part, Prohibition Mania was generally well received.
Not long afterwards, Darrow teamed with Wallace Rice to edit a book which gave a platform to Darrow’s life-long commitment to agnosticism. In Infidels and Heretics: An Agnostic’s Anthology are collected excerpts from the writings of such luminaries as Plato, Erasamus, Charles Darwin, Walt Whitman, William Shakespeare, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Also included is part of Darrow’s own plea in the defense of Loeb and Leopold. All of the excerpts center on expressions of doubt and other arguments against organized religion.
Darrow’s own autobiography, The Story of My Life, saw print in 1932 and met with mixed response.
After Darrow’s death, many of his writings and trial arguments were collected in two volumes: Attorney for the Damned, edited by Arthur Weinberg; and Verdicts out of Court, which Weinberg edited with his wife, Lila. The Weinbergs are also the authors of a biography of Darrow titled Clarence Darrow, a Sentimental Rebel. Attorney for the Damned appeared in 1957 and includes, among other selections: Darrow’s 1902 address to inmates in the Cook County jail, his cross-examination of Bryan during the Scopes trial, his defense plea on behalf of the socialist Debs, his eulogy on behalf of his liberal mentor and partner Altgeld, and his testimony in his own juror bribery trial.
Verdicts out of Court became available to readers in 1963 and includes various essays and lectures by Darrow, including “Why I Am an Agnostic," “The Myth of the Soul,” and even a pair of Darrow’s short stories—“The Breaker Boy” and “Little Louis Epstine.”
Several shorter works from Darrow’s ouevre have seen publication since his death, testifying to his lasting relevance to the U.S. legal system.
Darrow had always been interested in criminal law, in part because of his acceptance of new, psychological theories stressing the role of determinism in human behavior. He viewed criminals as people led by circumstance into committing antisocial acts rather than as free-willing monsters. For this reason he was a bitter opponent of capital punishment, viewing it as a barbaric practice.
Darrow was a strong supporter of female suffrage and empowerment.
Quotations:
"When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. I'm beginning to believe it."
"When we fully understand the brevity of life, its fleeting joys and unavoidable pains; when we accept the facts that all men and women are approaching an inevitable doom: the consciousness of it should make us more kindly and considerate of each other. This feeling should make men and women use their best efforts to help their fellow travelers on the road, to make the path brighter and easier as we journey on. It should bring a closer kinship, a better understanding, and a deeper sympathy for the wayfarers who must live a common life and die a common death."
"To be an effective criminal defense counsel, an attorney must be prepared to be demanding, outrageous, irreverent, blasphemous, a rogue, a renegade, and a hated, isolated, and lonely person - few love a spokesman for the despised and the damned."
"I have lived my life, and I have fought my battles, not against the weak and the poor - anybody can do that - but against power, against injustice, against oppression, and I have asked no odds from them, and I never shall."
"Do you, good people, believe that Adam and Eve were created in the Garden of Eden and that they were forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge? I do. The church has always been afraid of that tree. It still is afraid of knowledge. Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas. So does whiskey. I believe in the brain of man."
"The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business."
"The world is made up for the most part of morons and natural tyrants, sure of themselves, strong in their own opinions, never doubting anything."
"I am pleading for the future; I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men. When we can learn by, reason and judgment and understanding and faith that all life is worth saving, and that mercy is the highest attribute of man."
"It is indeed strange that with all the knowledge we have gained in the past hundred years we preserve and practice the methods of an ancient and barbarous world in our dealing with crime. So long as this is observed and exercised there can be no change except to heap more cruelties and more wretchedness upon those who are the victims of our foolish system."
"I am not afraid of any god in the universe who would send me or any other man or woman to hell. If there were such a being, he would not be a god; he would be a devil."
"The efforts of the medical profession in the US to control: ... its. .. job it proposes to monopolize. It has been carrying on a vigorous campaign all over the country against new methods and schools of healing because it wants the business ... I have watched this medical profession for a long time and it bears watching."
Membership
Darrow was a member of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Interests
literature
Connections
Darrow married Jessie Ohl in April 1880. They had one child, Paul Edward Darrow, in 1883. They were divorced in 1897. Darrow later married Ruby Hammerstrom, a journalist 16 years his junior, in 1903. They had no children.