Vicky Saker Woeste is an adjunct professor of law at Indiana University McKinney School of Law and an affiliated research professor at the American Bar Foundation. She is a historian with degrees from the University of Virginia (B.A., 1983) and the University of California at Berkeley (M.A. 1985 and Ph.D. 1990). Woeste’s research interests lie at the intersection of social and legal change. She studies how law, rather than being a static statement of values, is a dynamic, integral part of how societies develop over time. By examining how individuals and organizations understand and use law to improve their lives or to legitimate discrimination and oppression, she sheds light on the effects of legal change on social practices and economic mobility. Her most recent book, “Henry Ford’s War on Jews and the Legal Battle Against Hate Speech,” relates the story of Ford’s antisemitic, libelous campaign against prominent Jewish Americans during the 1920s using previously undiscovered unpublished sources. Her first book, “The Farmer’s Benevolent Trust: Law and Agricultural Cooperation in Industrial America 1865-1945,” tells the history of monopolistic organizations that enabled farmers to set prices for their crops much as labor unions act on behalf of workers. She is also the co-editor of a collection of essays, “Jews and the Law,” which examine the historical, sociological and professional experiences of Jewish Americans.
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Group Libel
Since the 1900s, group libel, the defamation of an entire group of people, has coexisted uneasily with the First Amendment’s emphasis on individual speech rights.