Background
James McCauley Landis was born in Tokyo, Japan, the son of the Reverend Henry Mohr Landis and Emma Marie Stiefler. He spent his early years at the Meiji Gakuin missionary compound, where his parents were teachers.
( As Felix Frankfurter and James Landis write in their pr...)
As Felix Frankfurter and James Landis write in their preface to The Business of the Supreme Court, "To an extraordinary degree legal thinking dominates the United States. Every act of government, every law passed by Congress, every treaty ratified by the Senate, every executive order issued by the President is tested by legal considerations and may be subjected to the hazards of litigation. Other Nations, too, have a written Constitution. But no other country in the world leaves to the judiciary the powers which it exercises over us." This classic volume, first published in 1928, originated in a series of articles written by Frankfurter, then a professor of law at Harvard University, and his student, Landis, for the Harvard Law Review. These articles chronicled and analyzed the many judiciary acts that were passed between 1789 and 1925, and illuminated the intimate connection between form and substance in the life of American law. For instance: When a community first decided to enact zoning laws--the Supreme Court had to approve. When the United States made a treaty with Germany following World War I--the Supreme Court had to define the limits and meaning of the treaty. Newly reissued with an introduction by constitutional expert Richard G. Stevens, The Business of the Supreme Court is still as fresh and relevant today as it was when first published. It is a work that will aid the student of the law to both love the law and remain true to its purposes.
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(In 1960, James M. Landis drafted this "Report on Regulato...)
In 1960, James M. Landis drafted this "Report on Regulatory Agencies to the President-Elect" and submitted it to President-elect (Sen.) John F. Kennedy, reexamining the federal regulatory commissions and administrative agencies’ structures and powers. He recommended such reforms as strengthening the commissions’ chairpersons and streamlining the agencies’ procedures. The Kennedy Administration subsequently adopted many of the recommendations. This historic, oft-cited, and insightful monograph is now available as a modern and affordable paperback book; previously, it was nearly impossible to obtain even in used printings. Part of the 'Legal Legends Series' from Quid Pro Books. Other authors in the series include Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Karl Llewellyn, Roscoe Pound, Benjamin Cardozo, Thomas Reed Powell, Woodrow Wilson, Joseph Story, Louis Brandeis, and John Chipman Gray. Their classic works are presented in quality, modern formatting by Quid Pro Books and available at booksellers everywhere, as well as in new digital editions.
https://www.amazon.com/Report-Regulatory-Agencies-President-Elect-Landis/dp/1610272498?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1610272498
James McCauley Landis was born in Tokyo, Japan, the son of the Reverend Henry Mohr Landis and Emma Marie Stiefler. He spent his early years at the Meiji Gakuin missionary compound, where his parents were teachers.
At the age of thirteen he sailed alone to the United States to continue his education. A phenomenally bright student, Landis led his classes at the Mercersburg Academy, Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, in 1916 and at Princeton in 1921. He won a scholarship to Harvard Law School, where he came under the tutelage of Felix Frankfurter. He received his S. J. D. in 1925.
After graduation in 1924, he remained for a year as Frankfurter's research fellow. Together they published a number of articles on law and politics and The Business of the Supreme Court (1927). In 1925, Frankfurter arranged for Landis to clerk for Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis.
In 1926 Landis was appointed to the Harvard law faculty. Academic advancement came rapidly, aided by Frankfurter's prodigious backstage efforts and he became a professor.
At the onset of the New Deal, Landis joined Frankfurter, Benjamin Cohen, and Thomas Corcoran in drafting legislation to establish federal regulation of the sale of stocks. His grasp of regulatory and financial policy led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to appoint him to the Federal Trade Commission in 1933 and to the new Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 1934.
The next year Landis succeeded Joseph P. Kennedy as chairman of the SEC. A careful administrator with a talent for mastering technical detail, Landis pursued a policy of reconciliation with Wall Street. His conciliatory approach won the support of bankers and brokers for the SEC, but his accomplishments were soon overshadowed by the more activist program of the next chairman, William O. Douglas, who succeeded in winning exchange self-regulation under SEC supervision.
Landis resigned from the SEC in 1937 and returned to Harvard as the youngest dean in the law school's history. He endorsed Roosevelt's "Court packing" plan and served as trial examiner in the Harry Bridges deportation hearings. His continued association with the New Deal raised protests from conservative alumni, but the faculty regarded Landis highly and his tenure was an "era of good feeling" after the stormy deanship of Roscoe Pound. As dean he shifted the curriculum from an emphasis on the common law to the needs of public administration.
In 1938, Landis' Storrs lectures at Yale were published as The Administrative Process. After Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt appointed Landis director of the Office of Civilian Defense, an organization left foundering by Fiorello La Guardia, the previous director. Landis campaigned strenuously for air raid protection and for an ambitious "block plan" to organize all nonmilitary volunteer activity.
In 1943, seeking a post closer to "the fighting front, " he became economic minister to the Middle East. Representing the United States at the Anglo-American Supply Centre in Cairo, Landis identified with Arab nationalism and opposed British colonial policy.
In 1945, Landis returned to Harvard, but his years of federal service had left him dissatisfied with academic life, and the collapse of his marriage had alienated him from his colleagues. After an unhappy year he resigned as both dean and professor to accept President Harry Truman's offer of the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) chairmanship. At the CAB, Landis became a proponent of a more flexible response to airline regulation, calling for experimentation with nonscheduled and all-cargo service. He also led the opposition to Pan American Airways' "chosen instrument" plan to combine all American overseas flights into a single line. Such policies won Landis the enmity of the larger passenger lines, which lobbied against his reappointment as chairman.
In December 1947, despite earlier promises to the contrary, Truman removed Landis from the CAB. Caught off guard by the dismissal, Landis turned for help to Joseph P. Kennedy. Kennedy took him on as adviser to Kennedy Enterprises, an amorphous assignment that involved him in myriad Kennedy family business and political ventures over the next decade.
In 1948 and 1949 he took the bar examinations for the first time and opened a law practice specializing in regulatory cases. Eventually his association with the Kennedys led to his return to federal service as special assistant to President John F. Kennedy. Landis' report to President-Elect Kennedy in 1960 stimulated the New Frontier's program of regulatory reform and reorganization. Although several of his proposals suffered defeat in Congress, the bulk of the program was established. The reforms strengthened the chairmen and streamlined the work of the independent commissions. Landis' resignation from the Kennedy administration came unexpectedly in September 1961, after he was named corespondent in a divorce suit.
By then Landis had fallen into deeper trouble. In his compulsion for professional achievement, he had allowed his private life to fall into disarray. He was verging on alcoholism; he was more than five years delinquent with his federal taxes; and the Internal Revenue Service had discovered the omission. Although Landis paid his back taxes and penalties, he was indicted, convicted, and sentenced to thirty days in prison. He spent his term in the hospital. Upon his release he was suspended from law practice. Shortly afterward he drowned accidentally in the pool at his home in Harrison, New York.
From the New Deal to the New Frontier, James Landis was the leading theorist and staunchest defender of federal regulation. In the independent commissions he believed the nation had found the basic mechanism for policing and promoting private enterprise in the public interest. It was a cause to which he devoted himself obsessively, mindless of the personal consequences. At the age of twenty-nine Landis became Harvard's first professor of legislation. His pioneering work in the field formed the basis for his influential article "Statutes and the Sources of Law, " in Harvard Legal Essays . .. (1934). "The Administrative Process" was his most important book. Drawing on his New Deal experiences, he presented an optimistic prognosis of the federal regulatory commissions, with their combination of legislative, judicial, and administrative powers. He saw them as a means of preventing both monopoly and socialism, and of making capitalism "live up to its pretensions. "
( As Felix Frankfurter and James Landis write in their pr...)
(In 1960, James M. Landis drafted this "Report on Regulato...)
Quotations: He wrote:"The administrative process is, in essence, our generation's answer to the inadequacy of the judicial and legislative process and our effort to find an answer to those inadequacies by some other method than merely increasing executive power. "
Landis married Stella Galloway McGehee on August 28, 1926. They had two daughters. They divorced in October 1947. He married Dorothy Purdy Brown on July 3, 1948. They had no children.
