"The Butler Act, passed by the Tennessee legislature in 1925, is the most famous of the various statutes to restrict the teaching of evolution in the public schools. Not only did it lead to the notorious Scopes Trial that summer, but it remained a dramatic symbol of the antievolution movement in the United States for several decades. The Tennessee Academy of Science played an important role in the Scopes case at the appellate level, submitting an extensive legal brief challenging the law's constitutionality. The Tennessee Supreme Court nonetheless upheld the statute in 1927 while overturning Scopes' conviction on a technicality. In the years that followed, occasional efforts to repeal the state's antievolution law surfaced in the legislature, …show more content…
There were sciences leaders that are of the state that had played no role in the developments that were until after the conviction of a teacher called John Thomas Scopes, during that time the "Tennessee Academy of Science" and they have engaged the legal counsel in order to represent an organization that would happen during the appeal of the conviction of Scopes'. With an extensive a "friend of the court" there is a brief that had been argued against the constitutionality of the statute, the academy had gained so much of attention and the praise that are from such lawyers like Clarence Darrow, he is one of the members of that defense team. Despite the actions of the Academy, however, there is the law's of the Tennessee Supreme Court needs to uphold the constitutional law of 1927, it has been further prevented of the appeal of the federal court system by overturning "Scopes' conviction on a technicality" (Webb, 2011). The Butler Act had been a "part of the state code for the next forty years", as a …show more content…
The principal had been assigned a textbook of biology that had discussed the evolution, that action had been convinced by the board that a law had been broken (Tennessean, 1929). Even if the charges had been dropped by a circuit court judge in Jamestown, the case had attracted the attention of Rep. George L. Stockton of Fentress County, and he had announced that there would be a bill introduced for the bill to repeal the Butler Act (Waldrop, 1929). The bill had been introduced on January fifteenth, by the Rep. C.R. Morse from Knox County. The bill had passed the first reading without any objection (Harwell, 1929). Just two days later, when the bill had come up for the second reading, that is when the house had tabled the measure by a voice vote, and that had killed the repeal legislation. "In reporting the events, Nashville Tennessean reporter Joe Hatcher opened his account by observing," "The House of Representatives decreed by a thundering majority that Tennessee will remain a 'Fundamental' state under the standards of William Jennings Bryan" (Hatcher,