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From Suffrage to the Senate America's Political Women: An Encyclopedia of Leaders, Causes & Issues

Willebrandt, Mabel Walker (1889-1963)

The first female public defender in the United States, Mabel Walker Willebrandt became an assistant attorney general in 1921, making her the first woman to hold a permanent sub-cabinet-level appointment. Seven years later, in 1928, she chaired the Credentials Committee of the 1928 Republican National Convention and with that appointment became the first woman to chair an important national convention committee for either party. Throughout her career, she worked to advance the opportunities and careers of other women lawyers.

Born in a sod dugout in southwestern Kansas, Willebrandt attended Park College and Academy in Kansas from 1906 to 1907. She married in 1910 and moved to Arizona because of her husband’s poor health. She earned her teaching certificate from Arizona’s Tempe Normal School in 1911, and the couple moved to the Los Angeles area, where she taught school during the day and attended law school at night, earning her BL from the University of Southern California in 1916 and her ML from the same school the next year. She began her law career as the assistant public defender in Los Angeles, working on more than 2,000 cases brought against women, particularly charges for prostitution. By 1918, she had established herself within the legal profession in Los Angeles, helped organize the Women’s Law Club of Los Angeles County, and developed an active private practice.

Willebrandt began her political career by campaigning for candidates and became a member of the California Republican State Central Committee which, combined with her legal skills, led to her appointment in 1921 as a U.S. assistant attorney general by President Warren G. Harding. In charge of Prohibition enforcement, taxes, and the Bureau of Federal Prisons, her responsibilities included coordinating the enforcement programs of the Treasury Department, the Coast Guard, and state and local law enforcement agencies. Willebrandt became most widely known for her prosecution of Prohibition cases, leading New York Governor Alfred E. Smith to refer to her as “Prohibition Portia.” She responded: “It is not particularly gratifying to be thought of merely as a Nemesis of bootleggers, a chaser of criminals.” Her first big cases came in 1922, when she broke two Southern rings, one in Savannah, Georgia, and the other in Mobile, Alabama, in which Congressman John W. Langley of Kentucky was found guilty. Willebrandt developed a novel strategy for enforcing the Volstead Act when she decided to use income tax evasion as a way to stop bootleggers. She preferred enforcing tax laws because, as she said: “They require detached and abstract thought, an intellectual exercise of which women were once thought incapable.”

Willebrandt aggressively pursued those who broke the law, filing between 49,000 and 55,000 criminal and civil cases annually. In these cases, she helped establish the constitutional validity of the Volstead Act and other laws through U.S. Supreme Court decisions. Of the 39 cases she argued before the Court, she won 37. By 1929, of all the lawyers who had argued cases before the Court, she ranked fourth in the total number of cases she had presented.

With prisons filling with Volstead violators, the need for additional space in them grew, as did the need to review the related policies. Willebrandt began by calling for a federal women’s prison, for which she sought support from the Women’s Joint Congressional Committee (WJCC). With the WJCC’s help, she found support from the League of Women Voters, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, the General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC), and several other groups. She also believed that young, male, first-time offenders serving their sentences in prison were further corrupted by the exposure to more experienced law violators and that a federal reformatory for them was needed. By enlisting the support of the Young Men’s Christian Association, GFWC, American Bar Association, Kiwanis Club International, and other groups, Willebrandt succeeded in creating a federal reformatory. In addition, she sought to improve prison conditions and to provide work within prisons. Her first task, however, was to identify and remove corrupt and incompetent prison officials by planting government agents posing as inmates within the facilities. With the support of the GFWC and others interested in prison reform, she then began developing prison industries to provide employment for every prison inmate and engaging in perennial battles for appropriations for the programs.

In 1928, Willebrandt turned some of her attention to the Republican Party and to making Herbert Hoover the party’s presidential nominee. She attended the Republican National Convention as a Hoover delegate and was permanent chair of the party’s Credentials Committee. As Credentials Committee chair, Willebrandt worked to ensure that the committee decided in favor of delegates pledged to Hoover, which helped him obtain the nomination. A dedicated Hoover supporter, Willebrandt worked for him throughout the campaign and became the center of a national controversy. In a speech to a group of Methodists who supported Prohibition, Willebrandt questioned Democratic presidential nominee Al Smith’s commitment to enforcing the Volstead Act and characterized Hoover as ready to provide the necessary leadership in enforcing it. In that and subsequent speeches to other religious groups, she referred to Smith’s religion, Catholicism, making it an issue in the campaign. Willebrandt was attacked by the press for injecting religion into the presidential race, and some Republican leaders wanted her silenced. One leading feminist, however, viewed the dispute as testimony that a woman had enough political power to be the center of a disagreement. Commenting on the criticism heaped on Willebrandt, Democratic Party leader Emily Newell Blair said that Willebrandt was the first woman to make a place for herself as a “great figure in politics.” After Hoover won the election, Willebrandt concluded that he was not as committed to enforcing Prohibition as she had thought and resigned as assistant attorney general in May 1929.

Willebrandt joined Aviation Corporation as general counsel and began a new career in the emerging field of aviation law, chairing a committee on the topic for the American Bar Association from 1938 to 1942. She also pioneered in the area of radio law, winning a U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the Federal Radio Commission’s power to regulate broadcasting. In addition, she worked for Louis B. Mayer of MGM Studio and Hollywood stars and other celebrities.

See also: General Federation of Women’s Clubs; Langley, Katherine Gudger; League of Women Voters; Woman’s Christian Temperance Union; Women’s Joint Congressional Committee

References: Brown, Mabel Walker Willebrandt (1984); The New York Times, April 9, 1963; Strakosh, “A Woman in Law” (1927).

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
"Willebrandt, Mabel Walker (1889-1963)." From Suffrage to the Senate America's Political Women: An Encyclopedia of Leaders, Causes & Issues, edited by Suzanne O’Dea, Salem Press, 2019. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Suffrage3e_0990.
APA 7th
Willebrandt, Mabel Walker (1889-1963). From Suffrage to the Senate America's Political Women: An Encyclopedia of Leaders, Causes & Issues, In S. O’Dea (Ed.), Salem Press, 2019. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Suffrage3e_0990.
CMOS 17th
"Willebrandt, Mabel Walker (1889-1963)." From Suffrage to the Senate America's Political Women: An Encyclopedia of Leaders, Causes & Issues, Edited by Suzanne O’Dea. Salem Press, 2019. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Suffrage3e_0990.