Kat wrote:
they were all shams and were decided based on majoritarian views
"Majoritarian"? If you learned that word in school, quit now - their grasp of English is tenuous and gives me cause to fear for other aspects of their education.
re: "protecting the innocent"
The function of a trial is not to protect the innocent - does a trial not also exist to confirm the guilt of the accused? A trial occurs to provide a forum for the execution of a law, often resulting in some debate as to whether or not it should be employed. Trial setups can also be used to debate a laws merits, often by way of an example case.
The Scopes trial in particular was a test case designed to challenge the validity of an act passed in 1925 by the Tennessee legislature that banned the teaching of evolution, to whit:
Quote:
(I)t shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.
John Scopes was a science teacher. After the Act had passed, the ACLU circulated an announcement that it was willing to go to bat for anyone who was willing to challenge the law. Scopes was one of a group of people who helped set up the test case. He was prosecuted by two lawyers who he was friends with for having taught biology out of the state-approved textbook (which had evolution info contained in it).
Scopes was found guilty of having violated the Act, largely at the request of his leading defense attorney, Clarence Darrow. Darrow wanted him found guilty so that the case could be appealed up to the Tennessee Supreme Court, where the law might be struck down. (As it happens, the decision in the case was reversed (and dismissed) on a technicality rather than on constitutional grounds.)
How on earth that trial supports a "majoritarian" viewpoint, given that the voter-elected Tennessee legislature had enacted the law thus challenged, is beyond me.