FIVE ALL-STARS Evan Kohlmann L'04 Eric Rothschild L'93 Miguel Rodriguez C'94 L'99 Derek Pew L'93 Aretha Delight Davis L'97

Intelligent design (ID)—the proposition that life could not have evolved by random mutation and natural selection but could only have been planned and brought about by some allconceiving mind—is the newest incarnation of Scopes v. State. It’s not old-school, Bible-thumping creationism but a more savvy adaptation that dresses up the Book of Genesis in a lab coat and is guarded about its use of words like “God” or “Creator.”

Rothschild, 39, a partner at the Philadelphia firm Pepper Hamilton, originally joined the First Amendment fight in 1999, when the Kansas Board of Education took evolution out of the state’s science curriculum. As a trial lawyer, he works mostly on commercial litigation and reinsurance cases for his day job, but events in Kansas led him to join a legal advisory panel with the National Center for Science Education, which tracks assaults on evolution in schools and legislatures across the country. When the school board in Dover, Pa., tried to slip intelligent design into its science classrooms, he was quick to offer his firm’s services, pro bono, and led a team of lawyers from the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State in representing 11 parents who filed suit in federal court.