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The Trial That Rocked the World (Monkey Trial) ---by John Scopes
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1. The author
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This article is written by John Thomas Scopes (August 3, 1900 – October 21, 1970). He is a teacher in Dayton, Tennessee at the age of 24, and was charged on May 25, 1925 with violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of evolution in Tennessee schools. He was in court in a case known as the Scopes Trial.
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The author makes efforts to portray the utterly different figures of two counsels, describes the different spectators' actions when they were in the court. And the author uses many rhetorical devices to give us a famous and lively trial in U.S history.
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2. Background Information about the Trial John Thomas Scopes came to Tennessee fresh out of college. In the spring of 1925, he had just completed his first year as science teacher and part-time football coach at the high school in the little town of Dayton.
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Scopes planned to return home to Kentucky for the summer. But in his words, "a beautiful blonde" distracted him and he stayed for another week hoping for a date. The decision changed his life forever.
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It all began when the state of Tennessee passed a law making it a crime to teach evolution in public schools. A new organization called the American Civil Liberties Union responded immediately. The ACLU placed an ad inviting a teacher to help test the law in the courts. Dayton was in an economic slump, and the town's movers and shakers thought a sensational trial would put Dayton "on the map."
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① ---Butler Act 《布特勒法》 The Butler Act was a 1925 Tennessee law forbidding public school teachers from denying the Biblical account of man ’ s origin. The law also prevented the teaching of the evolution of man from lower orders of animals in place of the Biblical account. However, the law did not prohibit the teaching of evolutionary theory for other species of plants or animals.
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② ---American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) The ACLU Foundation, an organization which focuses on litigation 法律诉讼 and communication efforts. The American Civil Liberties Union, an organization which focuses on legislative lobbying 立法游说.
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The ACLU's stated mission The ACLU's stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." It works through litigation, legislation, and community education.
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The ACLU's stated mission Founded in 1920 by Crystal Eastman, Roger Baldwin and Walter Nelles, the ACLU was the successor organization to the earlier National Civil Liberties Bureau founded during World War I. The ACLU reported over 500,000 members at the end of 2005.
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John Scopes was playing tennis when a group of businessmen called him to the town gathering place, Robinson's drugstore. They asked if he would be willing to be indicted for teaching evolution. Though he could not remember actually teaching Darwin's theory, Scopes believed in evolution and agreed to the plan.
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The trial quickly became a media circus. John Scopes was to have Clarence Darrow, America's top criminal lawyer, defend him. The famous politician and antievolutionist, William Jennings Bryan, volunteered to assist the prosecution. Reporters from all over the country flocked to Dayton, including an announcer from Chicago's WGN radio. It would be the first live broadcast of a trial in American history.
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The trial began on July 10, 1925. "The town was filled with men and women who considered the case a duel to the death 死亡决斗," John Scopes later wrote. "Everything I did was likely to be noted. ” But over the next two weeks nobody paid much attention to the defendant. Attorneys for both sides hogged the spotlight in the overheated courtroom.
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In the words of historian Kevin Tierney, "Scopes was being used. He was completely willing to be used. But essentially the case had been taken over by the big names."
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On the most sensational day of the trial, when Clarence Darrow interrogated William Jennings Bryan as an expert on the Bible, Scopes actually became a reporter for his own trial-- filling in for a journalist who had left town!
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The trial ended in a conviction. The judge imposed a fine of $100 and John Scopes spoke for the first time. "Your honor," he said, "I feel that I have been convicted of violating an unjust statute. I will continue in the future, as I have in the past, to oppose this law in any way I can."
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For Scopes, the trial had been an ordeal. When it was all over, he gave up teaching and left town. He accepted a scholarship to the University of Chicago, received a master's degree in geology and took a job as a petroleum engineer in Venezuela -- where no one had ever heard of him
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The name of John Scopes became synonymous with his trial, which is popularly known as the Monkey Trial. A film, called Inherit the Wind, was made from the trial,with much of the dialogue coming directly from transcripts of the court proceedings.
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Rhea County Courthouse
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The Scopes 'Monkey Trial' - July 10, 1925 - July 25, 1925
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A slogan of Anti-evolution
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3. 20 世纪美国桂冠律师 Clarence Darrow : Leader of defense, known as one of the best criminal lawyers of his era who 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. In the Monkey Trial, Darrow's defense, and particularly his cross-examination of Bryan, who spoke for the biblical, antiscientific, fundamentalist side, served to discredit religious fundamentalism and won national attention.
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4. William Jennings Bryan 威廉詹宁斯布莱恩
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William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925): born in Salem, Illinois. In his middle-class family, great emphasis was placed on religion and morality, not only in one ’ s personal life but in politics and in the conduct of national affairs.After graduating from Illinois College of Law in Chicago, he opened a law offices in Jacksonville. In 1887,Byran moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, practicing law and simultaneously turning toward politics.
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In the trial, he ’ s the leader of prosecution, known as a fundamentalist and local hero. Bryan was a three-time presidential candidate and former Secretary of State to Woodrow Wilson. After a few years of retirement, he joined the Chautauqua circuit 传道、讲学等 to rail against 抱怨 Darwin in tent revivals 信仰 复兴布道会 across the country.
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In 1925 he appeared for the prosecution in the Scopes trial in Tennessee opposing the teaching of theories of evolution in public schools. The ‘ naivete ‘ 天真 and narrowness of his thinking emerged clearly in this trial, which was Bryan's last appearance in public before his death in 1925.
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Bryan was named the "Silver-Tongued Orator" because of his eloquence and logical thinking. During the trial he stood firmly on his convictions despite the drillings of Darrow. Bryan saw that this was not a question of science, but of theology and philosophy. One scientist summed up Bryan's performance in this way: "William Jennings Bryan, though maligned 被恶意诽谤 and humiliated, was the hero of the Scopes trial. He demonstrated that he had a better basic understanding of evolution and the Bible than his detractors 诽谤者, 贬低者 had."
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审判结束 5 天以后, 1925 年 7 月 26 日, 在参加一场教堂弥撒后,睡眠中的布 莱恩再也没有醒来。他被描述成一个 悲剧性的负面人物,巴尔蒂摩太阳报 的名记者曼肯( Henry Louis Mencken ) 对布莱恩评价 “ 生命发端于一个英雄, 结束于一个小丑 ” ,这个评价也广泛流 传开来。
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Brian Darrow
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5. Henry Louis Mencken ( 亨利 路易斯 门肯)
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Henry Louis Mencken is a US controversialist, humorous journalist, and critic. He is often regarded as one of the most influential American writers of the early 20th century. Mencken worked on the staff of the Baltimore Sun for much of his life.
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As the most influential US literary critic in the 1920s,he often used criticism to jeer at the nation ’ s social and cultural weaknesses. Prejudices (1919~1927) collects many of his reviews and essays. In The American Language, he brought together American expressions and idioms; by the time of his death he was perhaps the leading authority on the language of the US.
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6. Dudley Field Malone Dudley Field Malone (1882-1954): American lawyer. He was city attorney at New York (1909) and became third assistant secretary of state in 1913. Malone, known widely as an exponent 倡导 者 of liberal ideas, was a member of the defense legal staff at the Scopes trial in Tennessee.
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7. 进化论和神创论之冲突 Genesis: first Book of the Old Testament which recounts the creation of the world and claims that God made the world and God made the sun on the fourth day.
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创世纪是《圣经》的第一卷描述了世界的 创造,声称是上帝创造了世界和上帝在第 四天创造了太阳。 创世纪名字取自一首诗,意思是开始。讲 述了犹太教和基督教的历史起源,开始了 以色列入侵的历史。除了上帝创造宇宙外, 它还包括伊甸园、亚当和夏娃、该隐和亚 伯、诺亚与洪水,通天塔、亚伯拉罕、以 撒和雅各的全部故事,最后以雅各的儿子 约瑟夫的故事结束。
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English naturalist and biologist; originator of the theory of man's evolution by natural selection; his best known works, Origin of Species (1859), Descent of Man (1871) CharlesDarwin(1809-82)
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On the Origin of Species, published on 24 November 1859, is a seminal work of scientific literature, considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology. Its full title was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.
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Darwin's theory of evolution is summarized as follows: 1.Every species is fertile enough that if all offspring survived to reproduce , the population would grow. 2.Despite periodic fluctuations, populations remain roughly the same size. 3.Resources such as food are limited and are relatively stable over time. 4.Individuals in a population vary significantly from one another. 5.Much of this variation is inheritable.
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6. Individuals less suited to the environment are less likely to survive and less likely to reproduce; individuals more suited to the environment are more likely to survive and more likely to reproduce and leave their inheritable traits to future generations, which produces the process of natural selection. 7. This slowly effected process results in populations changing to adapt to their environments, and ultimately, these variations accumulate over time to form new species.
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Fundamentalists, who believed in a literal interpretation of the Bible, locked into Darwin and the theory of evolution as "the most present threat to the truth they were sure they alone possessed". With evolution as the enemy, they set out to eradicate it from their society, beginning with the education system. Fundamentalism 原教旨主义
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8. United States Law The legal system in the US originated from the English system of common law, unwritten law in which precedent plays an important role. However, as the U.S. developed, its own system of written statutes and codes evolved. American Law is now based on a blend of written legal decisions and of legislation.
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There are two types of American law civil law criminal law.
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Civil law covers suits between individuals (companies as well as people are “ individuals ” ). Insurance claims, divorces, and business malpractices are example of matters handle under civil law. 美国民法的特点是:包括的范围很广,除若干 州有单独的民法外,一般包括许多有关契约、 侵权、财产、继承和婚姻家庭方面的制定法和 判例,统称为私法。
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Criminal law covers cases brought by the state against individuals: criminal offenses range from traffic tickets to major crimes like hijacking and murder. 刑法是规定犯罪、刑事责任和刑罚的 法律, 像抢劫、杀人的制定法和判例。
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9. Certain legal terms: Jury 陪审团 : A group of laymen, called jurors, summoned to study the evidence and determine the facts in a dispute tried in a court of law. The formally produced evidence is considered the basis for decision by an objective jury. The use of the jury system is an important protection against judicial and administrative tyranny and is provided in most criminal and civil cases.
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大陪审团 A grand jury of 12 to 23 members usually considers the evidence and determines whether a trial is justified. 大陪审团成员一般在 12~23 人, 仔细考虑证据并确定审判的公正 性。
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小陪审团 A petty jury, usually of 12 members, sits at the trial proper and, after hearing the evidence, reaches a verdict. Traditionally, the verdict was required to be unanimous, but today some states allow majority verdicts. 小陪审团,通常由 12 名成员组成,根 据证据作出判决。现在已允许少于十 二名陪审官组成的陪审团所作出的裁 决以及陪审团没有全体一致, 只是多数 或绝对多数通过作出的裁决。
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In the case of “Monkey Trial”, among the 12 jury members, one is a church member, the rest are farmers with little education. During the process of the trial, the testimony from the side of the defendant is denied, therefore, to some degree, the evolutionists failed before the trial.
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Significance of monkey trial "Monkey trial" has become a famous case of "the anti-modern religious judge", it is a major battle between ration and ignorance, science and religion in the field of law. It ’ s of great significance both in the legal and intellectual history.
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