Clarence Darrow

Clarence Darrow (1857 to 1938) was an American lawyer, one of the most prominent trial attorneys and civil libertarians of his time, famous for representing trade union causes in the nineteenth century and for criminal cases in the twentieth, including the Leopold and Loeb murder trial, the Scopes trial and the Ossian Sweet defense. Born in Farmdale, Ohio, he read law after a year at the University of Michigan law department, took the Ohio bar examination and was admitted to the bar in 1878. He practised in Ohio and Illinois, moved to Chicago in 1888, worked in the city law department and for the Chicago and North-Western Railway, and in 1894 left the railroad to defend Eugene V. Debs after the Pullman Strike. He was a leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union and a noted speaker, debater and writer, some legal analysts consider him the greatest lawyer of the twentieth century, and he was posthumously inducted into the Trial Lawyer Hall of Fame.