James M. Landis

otherpersons|James Landis

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 received a law degree and a doctorate in juridical science 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 director of 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.

Sources

*Thomas McCraw, "Prophets of Regulation: Charles Francis Adams, Louis D. Brandeis, James M. Landis, and Alfred Kahn" (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984).

*Donald A. Ritchie, "James M. Landis: Dean of the Regulators" (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980)

Quotes

*"A statute rarely stands alone. Back of Minerva was the brain of Jove, and behind Venus the spume of the ocean," in "A Note on 'Statutory Interpretation,' " 43 Harvard Law Review 886, 891 (1930).
*"If anybody ever flied to the moon, the very next day Trippe will ask the Civil Aeronautics Board to authorize regular service."

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).

External links

* [http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives/Archives+and+Manuscripts/Kennedy.John+F/jfk_prez/whstaff/fa_landis_wh.htm A Register of His White House Files] at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum
* [http://community.asij.ac.jp/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=537&srcid=436 James Landis '18 — An Irregular Regulator]
* [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4223423 The Rise and Fall of SEC Pioneer James Landis] (audio story from NPR)