William Overton is a United States district court Judge of Little Rock, Arkansas. The United States district courts are the general trial courts of the United States federal court system. ... There is also a Littlerock, California. ...
He is known for his ruling on Act 590 "The Arkansas' Balanced Treatment Act", which was a law seeking to require the teaching of Creation Science in classrooms. This statute was advocated by its supporters as providing equal treatment of creation science as the Theory of Evolution in the science classrooms. Creation Magazine is a venue for young-earth creationist beliefs. ... This article is about biological evolution. ...
When Judge Overton struck down the Act in 1982, he used the criteria that a scientific theory must be tentative and always subject to revision or abandonment in light of the facts that are inconsistent with, or falsify, the theory. A theory that is by its own terms dogmatic, absolutist and never subject to revision is not a scientific theory.
In summary, he held that a scientific theory to be taught in schools must be:
It is guided by natural law;
It has to be explained by reference to natural law;
It is testable against the empirical world;
Its conclusions are tentative, i.e., are not necessarily the final word;
On January 5,1985, JudgeWilliamOverton released his 38-page ruling in favor of the plaintiffs, the ACLU.
Overton ruled that creation science could not qualify as an alternative scientific explanation, on the pretext that it was primarily held by people who believed in the existence of God.
Overton ruled that Arkansas Act 590 was therefore an attempt to establish religion in a state-supported school in violation of the First Amendment of the federal Constitution.
On June 1, 1968, he found a human footprint and trilobites in the same rock, and the footprint was stepping on some of the trilobites!
In December 1981 at the Federal District Court in Little Rock, Arkansas, JudgeWilliamOverton presided over a trial to decide whether the State of Arkansas could place concepts about creation in public school textbooks.
It is a known fact that the ACLU has advised every state legislature, considering enactment of a law permitting equal time for both views, that the ACLU will give them another full-blown "monkey trial," as they did at Dayton, Tennessee in 1925.
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