The Prestige of the Law: Revisiting Obscenity Law and Judge Woolsey’s Ulysses Decision

Judge John Woolsey’s famous 1933 U.S. District Court decision declared Ulysses not obscene, which legalized the novel’s importation into the United States and paved the way for Random House’s 1934 edition. Important as “U.S. v. One Book Called ‘Ulysses’” was, none of the principles Woolsey articulated were new. A deeper understanding of Woolsey’s decision and its importance must restore its larger contexts, and this essay considers the decision’s unusual features—its sparse use of a rich case history, its rhetorical flourishes, its outsize stature—through a detailed consideration of Judge Woolsey himself. Several unexamined documents in archives and in private hands help to clarify our heretofore hazy picture of Woolsey, and a clearer image suggests that his decision relies not upon the standard authority of case law but upon the self-evident assertion of cultural value, or what we might call prestige. What makes Judge Woolsey’s literary bent both compelling and “dangerous” (as Judge Learned Hand described it) is that it highlights how legal authority, particularly regarding obscenity, often amounts to a form of prestige.