Clarence Darrow

Born April 18, 1857 (Kinsman, Ohio) Died March 13, 1938 (Chicago, Illinois)

Defense attorney

Clarence Darrow was an attorney who championed the fundamental principle that everyone is entitled to a fair trial in a court of law. He promoted radical political and social causes and secured his place in history by opposing governmental and religious limits on individual freedom. Darrow helped sway public opinion toward tolerance of organized labor with the right of working people to unionize.

A lifelong opponent of the death penalty, he was an active member of the Amnesty Association, an organization formed to seek death row pardons (release from prison or legal responsibility for a convicted offense) for inmates who had not yet been executed for capital crimes. The Clarence Darrow Death Penalty Defense College is part of the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor in the early twenty-first century. The college teaches the skills needed for attorneys representing those who face the death penalty.

As a courtroom speaker, Darrow was one of the first to favor plain words over the rhetoric, or flowery speech, used by most lawyers of the time. His realist style of public speaking was widely imitated by attorneys who admired his innovative Clarence Darrow. (The Library of Congress)
techniques of selecting jurors, interrogating hostile witnesses, and making closing arguments. Darrow's presentation skills have rarely been equaled. Building his legal practice with high-paying criminal cases and high-visibility causes, he was America's most famous trial attorney of the 1920s.