Now, he says of the trial, "Nobody knows what the outcome will be, but as a test for our society, it is extremely important".
"The evidence is more circumstantial than direct, but that doesn't exclude the possibility that there is more," said a senior Western diplomat, who called the case "a bit of a Rorschach test for this society".
How we care for the dying is a litmus test for our society.
"A basic moral test for our society," they write, "is how we treat the most vulnerable in our midst".
That has always been my test for whole societies.
Since employment is one of the most important factors in sustaining recovery from addiction, automatically rejecting workers due to positive tests can backfire for society in the long run.
"The papal visits are the litmus tests for Israeli society," Dr. Amnon Ramon, a comparative religion professor at the Hebrew University, told Haaretz in a recent interview.
Here we have a real-life chance to apply the political philosopher John Rawls's test for a just society, what he called the "veil of ignorance".
In Sunday's Los Angeles Times, Sharansky makes that implicit criticism of Bush's foreign policy explicit and states his opposition to the president's policy of using elections as the litmus test for a free society.
The real test for "the big society", those on the left argue, is the impact it will have in poorer parts of the country, particularly when funding is being cut to many voluntary groups and community projects.
