Marquette Sports Law Review Volume 15 Article 2 Issue 2 Spring The urJ isprudence of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis Shayna M. Sigman Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/sportslaw Part of the Entertainment and Sports Law Commons Repository Citation Shayna M. Sigman, The Jurisprudence of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, 15 Marq. Sports L. Rev. 277 (2005) Available at: http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/sportslaw/vol15/iss2/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Marquette Law Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. ARTICLES THE JURISPRUDENCE OF JUDGE KENESAW MOUNTAIN LANDIS SHAYNA M. SIGMAN" This article debunks the conventional view of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, a man who served as district court judge in the Northern District of Il- linois (1905-1922) and as the first commissioner of Organized Baseball (1921- 1944).' Relying on a realist lens of analysis, this novel work of legal history examines decisions from both halves of Landis's career to demonstrate that the "Benevolent Despot" was neither arbitrary nor unprincipled, as biographers have portrayed him to be. By exploring the rhetoric and content of the Landis opinions, letters, and pronouncements, this article reveals the common meth- odologies that Landis employed to legitimize the outcomes stemming from his focus on pragmatism, economic analysis of transactions, and Progressive era principles of moral justice. This article is relevant beyond its ability to utilize tools of jurisprudential analysis to correct an errant account of a legendary fig- ure; it also provides a useful framework for exploring the benevolent dictator model within private ordering.