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I was just recently reading about Leopold and Loeb after watching Hitchcock's Rope, which is based on a play inspired by the case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rope_(film)
One of my favorite Hitchcock films.
Its particular genius, for my money, is that it’s functionally a psychosexual drama about two closeted homosexuals. In 1948!
There is also a two-man musical.
It is explicit.
Discussed just a bit here:
The Leopold and Loeb Case - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10669257 - Dec 2015 (1 comment)
Others?
> but at the time he was just a prominent local lawyer who had worked in labor law.
Dead wrong. He defended Eugene Debs in the Pullman Strike case (1894), which was headline news all over the country. He got him off for the conspiracy charge, too.
(Debs served time for contempt of court, and during World War One for criticizing the war).
Oddly enough, he also visited Fremont Older at his house a few miles from me, which is now part of the Fremont Older Open Space Preserve.
The point (which the author as making) still stands, which is that Darrow achieved his lasting fame from the Scopes Monkey trial, which both as an event and in its fictionalized form as the play/movie "Inherit the Wind" is still relevant to discourse today as it is is brought up whenever Creationists are in the news.
No, the point does not stand. He was not "just a prominent local lawyer." Unless you don't know your history.
It could be that they were referring to his prominence as a non-labor lawyer, or that he hadn't had as many prominent cases after fallout from the LA Times case, but it is generally a strange statement. No, he wasn't as famous before Leopold and Loeb, and Scopes, or the culturally immortal figure he became, but he had certainly been a prominent lawyer at a national level, not a local one.
He had, as you point out, represented Debs, in federal trials over a major national strike, up to the Supreme Court. He had represented labor leaders in Idaho charged with conspiracy over the assassination of a former governor. He represented defendants accused of the LA Times bombing in California. For Leopold and Loeb, a question in the media was about wealthy families hiring such a prominent, high-priced lawyer. And the Scopes was essentially an organized publicity stunt that chose lawyers for both the prosecution and defense because they were famous and would attract attention.
I can't believe you are arguing about the precise gradations of informal descriptions of exactly how famous he was.
There are many current legal cases about major national issues, where the lawyers aren't famous.
Well, I can't believe you are bothering to comment here.
The author said something egregiously wrong. It's not "precise gradations of informal descriptions." And cge got it exactly right. What do you think you're adding here? It was all settled until you came along.