Not All Laws are Good Laws

Perhaps you don’t know (or remember) anything about the Butler Act, a new Tennessee law signed in 1925, but you are likely aware of the well-known trial that resulted from that law.

John Washington Butler (1925)

The Butler Act was signed one hundred years ago on March 21, 1925 (which happened to be my father’s tenth birthday), by Tennessee Governor Austin Peay.

John Washington Butler (1875~1952) was a corn and tobacco farmer northeast of Nashville, Tennessee, and a member of that state’s House of Representatives from 1923 to 1927. The bill that bears his name was passed by a lopsided vote of 71-5 without hearings or debate, and then also passed by the state Senate.

In May 1925, John Scopes (1900~70), a high school football coach and part-time teacher, was arrested for teaching evolution in violation of the Butler Act. His trial was held in Dayton, Tennessee, from July 10 to 21, and he was supported by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Dubbed at the time “the trial of the century,” the Scopes trial pitted the iconic Clarence Darrow as the defense lawyer and prominent politician William Jennings Bryan as the prosecuting attorney.*¹ As depicted superbly in the movie Inherit the Wind (1960), Scopes was judged guilty and fined $100.*²

In the trial’s aftermath, Tennessee disallowed the teaching of evolution in the classroom until the Butler Act was repealed in 1967. It was then determined that, after all, the 1925 law was a bad law, as it conflicted with modern science and also increasingly had lost the support of many (progressive) Christians.*³

Many “bad laws” have been opposed by civil disobedience. As stated in an online dictionary, civil disobedience means “the refusal to comply with certain laws … as a peaceful form of political protest.” That refusal is because of the perception that some laws are bad and should not be obeyed.

Here are just a few notable historical examples of such “disobedience”:

* Mohandas Gandhi’s protest against the salt tax in India. This month marks the 95^th anniversary of Gandhi’s historic “salt march” that began on March 12, 1930. It was in opposition to the salt tax levied by colonial Britain, which he saw as an oppressive, unjust law.

* Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s protest against the Nazi government in Germany. The Lutheran pastor was one of the best-known opponents of Adolph Hitler, who was democratically elected but soon gained totalitarian control over Germany in 1933 by means of his laws and the use of the Gestapo.

* Martin Luther King Jr.’s protest against the racial injustices in the U.S. According to Copilot (Microsoft’s AI “companion”) King “believed that moral principles were more important than unfair laws, so he “used civil disobedience not just to make a political statement but to really change society.” This included the march to Selma and “Bloody Sunday” 60 years ago in March 1965.

Civil disobedience to bad laws is often costly for the protesters.

* Gandhi was arrested on May 5, 1930, while on his salt march and sent to jail without trial where he remained until near the end of January 1931.

*Bonhoeffer was arrested in April 1943 and was imprisoned until his execution by hanging 80 years ago next month, on April 9, 1945.

* King was arrested 29 times and jailed, usually for rather short times, on many of those occasions. His most well-known incarceration was in April 1963 when he wrote Letter from a Birmingham Jail, during the week he was there.

Now, by contrast, the U.S. President seems to be a “scofflaw.” While the term originally meant disregard for minor laws, scofflaw now sometimes is used for a person who disregards court orders, thus directly challenging judicial authority.

This is the opposite of disregarding bad laws. It is harmful opposition to good laws, such as protecting people’s civil rights. Since his inauguration on Jan. 20, the 47^th POTUS seems to have made many executive actions harmful to women as well as to LGBTQ and non-White people.

For example, during the past few days, the Trump administration has deported three planeloads of Guatemalan immigrants to El Salvador in spite of a federal judge’s temporary restraining order questioning the legality of that action.

That conflict may be fomenting a constitutional crisis according to the news media, such as this detailed March 17 article on the website of Reuters.com.

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*¹ In 2023, Gregg Jarrett, a Fox News legal analyst and commentator, published The Trial of the Century, which, “calls upon our past to unite Americans in the defense of the free exchange of ideas, especially in this divided time.” The author describes it on YouTube here.

*² In recent years, it is often implied that $100 was just a token fine for John Scopes breaking the Butler Act in Tennessee. According to Wikipedia, however, his fine was equivalent to $1,793 in 2024.

*³ As I point out in my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism (2007, 2020), the Scopes Trial led to the weakening of Christian fundamentalism (2020, pp. 34~37).