James M. Landis

James M. Landis
2nd Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission
In office
1934–1937
President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Preceded by Joseph P. Kennedy
Succeeded by William O. Douglas

James McCauley Landis (September 25, 1899 – July 30, 1964) was an American academic, government official and legal adviser. He served as Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission from 1934 to 1937.

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 LL.B 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.

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Academic offices
Preceded by
Roscoe Pound
Dean of Harvard Law School
1937–1946
Succeeded by
Erwin Griswold
Government offices
Preceded by
Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr.
Securities and Exchange Commission Chair
1935–1937
Succeeded by
William O. Douglas
Government offices
Preceded by
L. Welch Pogue
Civil Aeronautics Board Chair
1946–1947
Succeeded by
Laurence S. Kuter