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Summer Pearce
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A-Level (Year 2) Ethics (2) Free Will and Determinism) Note on Hard Determinism, created by Summer Pearce on 16/11/2016.

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Summer Pearce
Created by Summer Pearce over 8 years ago
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Hard Determinism

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The Case of Loeb and Leopold
  • A tragedy of three young lost lives, a dead fourteen-year-old victim and the imprisonment of two teenage killers, unfolded in Chicago in 1924.
  • Eighteen year old Richard Loeb and nineteen year old Nathan Leopold were convicted of murder, and were fiercely defended by Clarence Darrow, on the grounds that of 'diminished responsibility'.
  • Darrow's plea continued for 12 hours, in order to save his clients from the death penalty. Darrow's plea used a mixture of poetry and prose, scientific fact and emotive language in order to convince the judges that his clients should have life imprisonment instead of execution.
  • The case was called the 'trial of the century' as it challenged psychologists and law enforcement to reconsider crime and the influences of social conditioning.
Loeb's Background
  • Loeb was the son of a wealthy businessman, and was regarded as incredibly intelligent, being the youngest graduate ever of the University of Michigan.
  • Loeb was obsessed with crime. He read mainly detective stories, which influenced his planning and committing of crimes - none of which caused harm to another person until this case.
  • Darrow and Leopold later attributed this obsession as a form of rebellion against his strict, but well-meaning upbringing.
  • For Loeb, crime was a game, and he aimed to plan the perfect crime just to prove it could be done.
Leopold's Background
  • Leopold was interested in ornithology, philosophy, and in particular, Loeb.
  • He was the son of a wealthy millionaire box-manufacturer, who was studying at the University of Chicago at the time of the crime, and was planning to begin studies at Harvard Law School.
  • Leopold had become the nation's leading authority on the Kirtland warbler, an endangered songbird that he lectured on often.
  • Leopold's ideas were heavily influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy. Nietzsche criticised moral codes, and believed that moral obligations did not applt to those who approached 'the superman'.
  • Leopold's idea of the superman was his friend and lover, Richard Loeb.