Clarence Darrow - Böcker

A famous defender of the underdog, the oppressed, and the powerless, Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) is one of the true legends of the American legal system. His cases were many and various, but all were marked by his unequivocal sense of justice, as well as his penchant for representing infamous and unpopular clients, such as the Chicago thrill killers Leopold and Loeb; Ossian Sweet, the African American doctor charged with murder after fighting off a violent white mob in Detroit; and John T. Scopes, the teacher on trial in the famous Scopes Monkey Trial. Published for the first time in 1957, "Attorney for the Damned" collects Darrow's most influential summations and supplements them with scene-setting explanations and comprehensive notes by Arthur Weinberg. Darrow confronts issues that remain relevant over half a century after his death: First Amendment rights, capital punishment, and the separation of church and state. With an insightful forward by Justice William O. Douglas, this volume serves as a powerful reminder of Darrow's relevance today.

In The Story of My Life recounts, and reflects on, his more than fifty years as a corporate, labour, and criminal lawyer, including the most celebrated and notorious cases of his day: establishing the legal right of a union to strike in the Woodworkers' Conspiracy Case exposing, on behalf of the United Mine Workers, the shocking conditions in the mines and the widespread use of child labour defending Leopold and Loeb in the Chicago "thrill" murder case defending a teacher's right to present the Darwinian theory of evolution in the famous Scopes trial fighting racial hatred in the Sweet anti-Negro and the Scottsboro cases and much more. Written in his disarming, conversational style, and full of refreshingly relevant views on capital punishment, civil liberties, and the judicial system, Darrow's autobiography is a fitting final summation of a remarkable life.

This volume presents a selection of 500 letters by Clarence Darrow, the pre-eminent courtroom lawyer of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Randall Tietjen selected these letters from over 2,200 letters in archives around the country, as well as from one remarkable find - the kind of thing historians dream about: a cache of about 330 letters by Darrow hidden away in the basement of Darrow's granddaughter's house. This collection provides the first scholarly edition of Darrow's letters, expertly annotated and including a large amount of previously unknown material and hard-to-locate letters. Because Darrow was a gifted writer and led a fascinating life, the letters are a delight to read. This volume also presents a major introduction by the editor, along with a chronology of Darrow's life, and brief biographical sketches of the important individuals who appear in the letters.

Clarence Darrow, son of a village undertaker and coffinmaker, rose to become one of America's greatest attorneys—and surely its most famous. The Ohio native gained renown for his central role in momentous trials, including his 1924 defense of Leopold and Loeb and his defense of Darwinian principles in the 1925 Scopes "Monkey Trial." Some have traced Darrow's lifelong campaign against capital punishment to his boyhood terror at seeing a Civil War soldier buried—and no client of Darrow's was ever executed, not even black men who were accused of murder for killing members of a white mob.Closing Arguments: Clarence Darrow on Religion, Law, and Society collects, for the first time, Darrow's thoughts on his three main preoccupations, revealing a carefully conceived philosophy expressed with delightful pungency and clarity. His thoughts on social issues, especially on the dangers of religious fundamentalism, are uncannily prescient. A dry humor infuses his essays, and his reflections on himself and his philosophy reveal a quiet dignity at the core of a man better known for provoking Americans during an era of unprecedented tumult. From the wry "Is the Human Race Getting Anywhere?" to the scornful "Patriotism" and his elegiac summing up, "At Seventy-two," Darrow's writing still stimulates, pleases and challenges.A rebel who always sided intellectually and emotionally with the minority, Darrow remains a figure to contend with sixty-seven years after his death. "Inside every lawyer is the wreck of a poet," Darrow once said. Closing Arguments demonstrates that, in his case, that statement is true.

This remarkable collection of the great attorney’s writings reveals why he was such a force in the court of law and in the court of public opinion. Darrow turned to writing—essays, debates, fiction—to influence a broader audience beyond the field of law. Through his observations on such social issues as race, revolution, labor, divorce, crime, war, and religion, and his estimates of men and women, he became the attorney for the public conscience. His beliefs, delivered with an urbane blending of wit, lawyer’s logic, satire, and sentiment, remain a part of our continuing social philosophy. They are amply illustrated in this superb collection, and remain strikingly pertinent today. “Fascinating.…Whether Darrow is condemning capital punishment, questioning immortality, or extolling free trade, he is usually incisive, never boring, and always unafraid of speaking his mind. A rare combination in his or any other age.”—William M. Kunstler, New York Times. “A fascinating collection of Darrow’s writings, showing the wide range and the impact of his thinking on the American character.”—Irving Stone.