The Scopes "Monkey Trial" was a famous legal case in the United States that put the Butler Act to the test, which established that it was illegal in every educational establishment of the state of Tennessee "the teaching of any theory that denies the history of the Divine Creation of the man as it is explained in the Bible, and replace it with the teaching that man descends from an order of inferior animals". It is the most resounding legal case in the history of the ideological battle between creationism and evolutionism.
John Scopes, a high school teacher, was accused on May 5, 1925 of teaching evolution using a chapter of a textbook that was based on ideas inspired by Charles Darwin's book The Origin of Species. The trial involved two of the most brilliant lawyers of the time. On the one hand William Jennings Bryan, member of the congress, former Secretary of State, and three times presidential candidate was in charge of the prosecution and accusation, while the prominent litigation lawyer Clarence Darrow led the defense.
The process attracted enormous attention from the press (which was what immediately called it "the monkey's trial") and from the American public, especially when the famous lawyer Clarence Darrow agreed to defend the defendant. Despite his brilliant final plea, Scopes was convicted by the Court, albeit only a symbolic fine and not a prison sentence as requested by the prosecutor.
