When Jack Powers, a brilliant but confused university student, who professes an extremist philosophy, makes a tendentious speech on the university grounds and is ridiculed by another fellow student named Martin White, two of Powers' shock troops beat White, making him lose consciousness. Powers, faced with a possible murder charge if White dies, is prosecuted for assault in the first degree.

Professor Wilson, a good friend of lawyer Lawrence Preston, asks him to defend Powers. Although he refuses to do so, because he is not personally in agreement with the criticisms made to democracy by the student, the oldest of the Prestons ends up accepting. His son, Kenneth, most violently at odds with the tirades of the "superman or iron man" Powers, helps his father in the trial.