Page:The World's Most Famous Court Trial - 1925.djvu/59

 follow this, if it can be followed, which I doubt very seriously, but I think the learned attorney-general has made a very strenuous effort to follow the statute with all its indefiniteness, but we do not think that is sufficient; we think that the indictment should set out just exactly what our defendant was supposed to have taught. My associate will emphasize, that particular part of our motion. Secondly, that the statute upon which the indictment depends is void for indefiniteness and lack of certainty, which we have stressed all through this hurried statement of ours, which will also be stressed by my associate.

Now, if your honor pleases, we come to the third and last section of our motion to dismiss; that the act and the indictment violates Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment of the constitution of the United States. Now, will your honor bear with me and let me read that?

The Court—Yes, sir. Take your course.

Mr. Neal: (Reading) I want to say that our main contention after all, may it please your honor, is that this is not a proper thing for any legislature, the legislature of Tennessee or the legislature of the United States to attempt to make and assign a rule in regard to. In this law there is an attempt to pronounce a judgment and conclusion in the realm of science and in the realm of religion. We contend, may it please your honor, that was not the purpose for which legislatures were created; under our system they were created for very definite, limited purposes, to lay down rules of conduct, rules of conduct that the framers of our constitution made a very definite, very precise and a very narrow line within which these rules of conduct should be drawn. But the great domain of opinion, the great realm of religion, the framers of our constitution, not that they regarded it unimportant, but that they regarded it so important that no power, legislative or court, would attempt to lay down and assign a rule to bind conscience and the minds of the people.

Now, may it please your honor, we have been met constantly and this is my concluding word, we have been met constantly by the assertion if you don't like this law, have it repealed. The bitter tragedy and humor of such a remark to us, we know, of course, that we cannot have this law repealed; we grant you that the legislature spoke for the majority of the people of Tennessee, but we represent the minority, the minority that is protected by this great provision of our constitution, that that man that hollers out to us the assertion that we should have his law repealed is either ignorant or has only contempt for this great provision of the constitution that was made to protect one sole individual or a dozen or a thousand.

Mr. Hays—If your honor please.

Gen. Stewart—Your honor, we have the right to speak.

The Court—Gentlemen, who of you will argue? We want all of you if you want to be heard.

Mr. Neal—Just Mr. Hays and Mr. Darrow will follow.

The Court—Mr. Hays, I will hear you now.

Mr. Hays—There are only a few phases of the argument of Judge Neal to which I wish to address myself. I should like to direct the court's attention to the indefiniteness of the indictment as drawn. Mr. Scopes is charged in the caption of the act with one thing and in the body of the indictment it is put in another way. It is a good deal like charging a man with murder and trying him for another offense. I believe this act is indefinite in many respects. I will pay my respects to the phase of it which I consider most indefinite. A man could not tell whether he is commitingcommitting [sic] a crime. It is not clear what is meant by the word "teach." Suppose during my next half hour I expound the theory of the divine