James M. Landis

James M. Landis, ca. 1938

James McCauley Landis (September 25, 1899 – July 30, 1964) was an American academic, government official and legal adviser.

Biography

Landis was born in Tokyo, Japan, where his parents were teachers at a missionary school. He graduated from Princeton University and in 1924 received a juris doctor from the Harvard Law School, where he was a student of Felix Frankfurter. In 1925, Landis was a law clerk to Justice Louis Brandeis of the U.S. Supreme Court. He then became a professor at the Harvard Law School, until called into government service during the New Deal.

Landis served as a member of the Federal Trade Commission (1933–1934), as a member of the Securities and Exchange Commission (1934–1937), and as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (1935–1937). While dean of the Harvard Law School from 1938 to 1946, Landis served as regional director of the U.S. Office of Civilian Defense (1941–1942) and then as its national director (1942–1943). President Franklin D. Roosevelt then sent him to Egypt as American Director of Economic Operations in the Middle East (1943–1945). In 1946, Roosevelt's successor, Harry S. Truman, later appointed him chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board, a position he served until the next year. A friend of the Kennedy family for years, he served as a legal advisor to Joseph P. Kennedy and as Special Counsel to President John F. Kennedy. In 1960 he drafted the Landis Report to President-elect Kennedy, reexamining the federal regulatory commissions and recommending such reforms as strengthening the commissions' chairmen and streamlining their procedures, which the Kennedy administration adopted.

Landis failed to pay his income taxes from 1956 to 1960. After this came to light in 1963, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to one month in jail. Because of illness, he spent the month in hospital facilities. Less than a year after he returned home, he suffered a heart attack and drowned in his swimming pool.

Works

• 'The Business of the Supreme Court', by James M. Landis and Felix Frankfurter, (New York, 1928).
• 'The Administrative Process', by James M. Landis, (New Haven, 1938).

Further reading

• McCraw, Thomas (1984). Prophets of Regulation: Charles Francis Adams, Louis D. Brandeis, James M. Landis, and Alfred Kahn. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674716078. 
• Ritchie, Donald A. (1980). James M. Landis: Dean of the Regulators. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674471717. 

External links

• The Rise and Fall of SEC Pioneer James Landis (audio story from NPR)
• "Finding aid for James McCauley Landis, Papers, 1924-1945.". Harvard Law School Library. 
• www.law.harvard.edu/news/spotlight/classroom/related/hls-deans.html

• "Instant Sentence, Time, Friday, Sept. 06, 1963". 

v t e Chairmen of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission Kennedy Landis Douglas Frank Eicher Purcell Caffrey Hanrahan McDonald D. Cook Demmler Armstrong Gadsby Cary Cohen Budge Casey B. Cook Garrett Hills Williams Shad Ruder Breeden Levitt Pitt Donaldson Cox Schapiro Walter White