Background
Mabel Walker Willebrandt was born Mabel Walker on May 23, 1889 near Woodsdale, Kansas, the daughter of David William Walker and Myrtle S. Eaton.
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
Mabel Walker Willebrandt
Edit Profileeducator assistant attorney general
Education
The family homestead was remote from public schools, and instruction in reading and writing from her parents, both of whom had been teachers, prepared her for schools in Kansas City, Mo. , and then at Park College in Parkville, Mo. , which she entered at age sixteen. Six years later she was teaching at the high school in Buckley, Mich. , and attending Ferris Institute there. Mabel Willebrandt was graduated from the state normal school at Tempe in 1911. She attended evening classes at the University of Southern California.
Career
She was next principal of a grammar school at Buena Park, Calif. , and then at South Pasadena. After admission to the California bar in 1915 she received the LL. B. in 1916 and the LL. M. in 1917. The next few years in Los Angeles brought Willebrandt an extraordinary reputation. Although she accepted no criminal cases in her private practice, she volunteered her services as assistant public defender in police courts - the first woman attorney in the country to accept such assignments - where she appeared as defense attorney for more than 2, 000 women. She also drafted a law to protect the property rights of married women that was later enacted, became the first woman to serve as a committee chairman for the American Bar Association, and joined the Republican Central Committee for the state of California. On August 29, 1921, President Warren Harding named Willebrandt assistant attorney general. At the Justice Department she continued to work for women's property rights, but her major responsibilities included the administration of the Bureau of Federal Prisons, the supervision of federal tax cases, and the prosecution of cases arising under the National Prohibition Act, often called the Volstead Act.
By 1925 she had been responsible for the more than 45, 000 criminal prosecutions in the federal courts and was arguing for the strict enforcement of the law not only before the Supreme Court but also in public forums across the nation.
In 1929, Willebrandt published an account of her experiences with the Volstead Act, The Inside of Prohibition. In this narrative of corruption, city by city, she praised some local officials while she recorded a spirited critique of others who, she said, promoted alliances among politicians and liquor interests. The book was also her response to charges raised against her during the 1928 presidential campaign, when she had been one of the most outspoken critics of the Democratic candidate, Al Smith of New York. She had accepted Governor Smith's identification of himself as an opponent of the Volstead Act, and she had attacked him and the "predatory politics" of Tammany Hall. In several speeches she had urged "dry" Protestant ministers to convince the nation that Smith was a threat to the "dry" Constitution. But she had never, she insisted, uttered any sentiment critical of Smith's Roman Catholicism. It may be that her repeated association of Herbert Hoover with the hope for strict enforcement of Prohibition and her obvious pleasure in public confrontation caused President Hoover to regard Willebrandt as a political liability. In any event, she left the Justice Department on June 2, 1929, returning to private practice in Los Angeles. From 1936 to 1957 she served as counsel to the Screen Directors' Guild. For years she had supposed that her record of devoted public service would sometime bring her a federal judgeship, but this wish was never fulfilled. She died at Riverside, California.
Achievements
Politics
She said that Prohibition was "a moral crusade under religious leadership, frankly intended to save the people from a habit believed to be the chief cause of crime, poverty and misery. " Yet some observers felt that she was motivated more by her principles of respect for all laws than by any desire to advance a moral crusade, that she was more a strict Republican than a strict prohibitionist.
Personality
The youngest woman ever to achieve her rank in federal government, Willebrandt had the strong body, the square jaw, and the large eyes and nose that cameras could not flatter. She was regarded as an unusually interesting and intelligent person, of whom it was said that "as an executive she is tireless, as a lawyer she is thorough and as a woman she is charming. "
She was also a strict and demanding superior, a shrewd political manipulator, and an exciting conversationalist, swift and sharp in repartee. Willebrandt was willing to accept the publicity that came to her as an attorney but resented that which came to her as a woman. She sustained a careful reticence regarding her personal life - the character of her marriage (some sources list her husband's name as Alfred, some as Arthur), the termination of that marriage (her apparent separation around 1916 and divorce in 1924), and her family life later (she had an adopted daughter, Dorothy).
Connections
On Feburary 7, 1910, she married the high school's principal, A. F. Willebrandt.
