Clarence Darrow

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.

Address to the Prisoners in the Cook County Jail & Other Writings on Crime & Punishment

Address to the Prisoners in the Cook County Jail & Other Writings on Crime & Punishment

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 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.