OAH Distinguished Lecturer Profile
NOTE: Unavailable 2018-2019.
Victoria Saker Woeste is a research professor at the American Bar Foundation in Chicago, an organization devoted to the interdisciplinary study of law. Her research inquires into the dynamics of legal change in twentieth-century U.S. society, with particular focus on agriculture and capitalism, business and regulation, and constitutionalism and civil rights. In her first book, The Farmer's Benevolent Trust: Law and Agricultural Cooperation in Industrial America (1998), Woeste argues that farmers mobilized law and corporate power to respond actively to industrialization and the nationalization of markets. Their initiative and creativity enabled them to mobilize law to shape market relations rather than be defined by them. In Henry Ford's War on Jews and the Legal Battle against Hate Speech (2012) Woeste offers an explosive retelling of the obscure story of the auto manufacturer's side career as a hate-speech publisher, set in the context of 1920s tribalism and heightened economic instability. Henry Ford's unreflected antisemitism precipitated a federal libel lawsuit against him in 1927 that introduced questions of group libel and published race prejudice to the national legal stage. Though strong evidence existed to support charges of libel, Ford was able to evade responsibility for the damage his printed words had done, and the lack of accountability ensured that Ford's beliefs would become a touchstone for antisemitic groups worldwide. The book ties together the early history of the American legal profession, the roots of modern hate-speech regulations, and the history of civil rights activism. She is currently studying the civil rights law practice of the religious figure Fred W. Phelps Sr. and an assessment of the contributions of the church he founded, the Westboro Baptists, to American constitutional law and legal consciousness. She is also working on a synthetic history of American agriculture and its relationship to the state since 1862, with particular attention to the stories of family farmers, tenants, and seasonal laborers.
In Henry Ford's War on Jews and the Legal Battle Against Hate Speech, the dramatic courtroom proceedings against America's beloved tinkerer and Flivver King, Henry Ford, unfold against the backdrop of America's "tribal twenties." Ford's influence on the nation's society and culture rivaled his impact on its economy; when he spoke, the country listened. So when he began publishing a newspaper dedicated to the "Neglected Truth" behind the presence of a nefarious "International Jew" at the highest levels of American government, few challenged his veracity or motives. One who did, an obscure lawyer from California, took Ford all the way to trial in Detroit's federal court--a sublime example of how lawsuits provide a crucible in which, with distractions and half-truths burned away, the historically situated meaning of law, and equality, becomes apparent. In the end, Ford escaped the verdict of law, but his lasting legacy as a purveyor of antisemitic hate speech provides a more realistic frame for understanding his significance.