NCLA 250: Administrative State Founder James Landis Awarded Bureaucracy’s Highest Dishonor
Presenting the King George III Prize for Worst Civil Liberties Violator
Washington, D.C., June 11, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Every awards season has its biggest “winner.” The Oscars have Best Picture. The Tonys have Best Musical. And for six years running, the New Civil Liberties Alliance has bestowed the one honor no public servant should ever aspire to receive: the King George III Prize for worst civil liberties violator. This year, as America celebrates its 250th anniversary, NCLA opened the competition to bureaucrats from the entire history of the nation. But the ultimate bureaucratic crown of shame goes to James M. Landis, architect of the modern Administrative State and NCLA’s choice for the worst bureaucrat in American history.
After weeks of spirited online voting, Landis emerged victorious from a field of 32 historical bureaucratic heavyweights to claim a distinction that is equal parts satire, civics lesson, and cautionary tale. Other nominees included runner-up John Brennan, the former CIA Director who discredited the Hunter Biden laptop story, Obama Attorney General Eric Holder of failed ‘Operation Fast and Furious’ fame, and Covid-scandal-ridden former CDC Director Rochelle Walensky. NCLA announced Landis’s “victory” last night at an event at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, attended by the tyrant King George III himself (in the form of a talented impersonator).
Competition was fierce. But Landis had the résumé voters were looking for. Aside from being the Dean of Harvard Law School, he was a leading force behind the New Deal. He drafted laws establishing powerful regulatory agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and later served as SEC chairman himself. Before that he was a Commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission. More importantly, Landis argued that the growing complexity of modern society required expert agencies capable of exercising legislative, executive, and judicial powers all at once—effectively creating what he described as a “Fourth Branch” of government. NCLA respectfully suggests the Founders omitted that branch—because they were fed up with King George III!
While the King George III Prize recognizes history’s most enthusiastic champions of concentrated administrative power, the evening also celebrated Americans working now to defend individual liberty from bureaucratic abuses.
NCLA presented Emily Ley, founder of Pensacola-based Simplified, with the George Washington Award for Client Bravery. Emily served as lead plaintiff in the first lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s unlawful use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs. The legal arguments NCLA initially advanced in Simplified v. Trump were the very legal arguments that prevailed in the Supreme Court’s decisions earlier this year in Learning Resources v. Trump and V.O.S. Selections v. Trump, which held those tariffs unlawful.
NCLA also honored former Solicitor General Noel Francisco and his colleagues at Jones Day with the George Washington Award for Best Amicus Curiae Brief for a brief they wrote supporting NCLA’s petition for certiorari in Harper v. Faulkender, a case seeking to restore Fourth Amendment protections against warrantless government access to Americans’ financial records held by third parties.
Steve Matthews and Sarah Hodges of the Haynsworth Sinkler Boyd Law Firm in Columbia, South Carolina received the George Washington Award for Best Local Counsel for their advocacy in Kirton v. South Carolina Department of Labor, defending jury trial rights, challenging due process of law violations, and contesting unlawful sanctions imposed on certified residential appraiser Joseph Kirton, an NCLA client.
Finally, Jeffrey L. Fisher, Co-Director of Stanford Law School’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, received NCLA’s George Washington Award for Pro Bono Work in recognition of the Clinic’s efforts advancing the constitutional principles at stake in Lesh v. United States, a challenge to the so-called petty-offense exception to the Sixth Amendment, which deprives criminal defendants facing less than a year in jail of the right to a jury trial.
The evening offered a fitting reminder during America’s semiquincentennial celebration: while history remembers those who accumulated power without accountability, it also remembers those who stood up to defend the liberties that make self-government possible.
NCLA released the following statements:
“As America celebrates 250 years of self-government, NCLA can think of no one more deserving of the King George III Prize than James Landis. As architect of the Administrative State, Landis helped build a system that concentrates power in the hands of unelected bureaucrats, distances government from the people it is meant to serve and demonstrates how easily liberty can be eroded when accountability is lost.”
— Karen Harned, Director of Engagement, NCLA
“Each year the King George III Prize singles out a terrible bureaucrat worthy of special condemnation. I’m surprised James Landis won out over bureaucrats responsible for FDR’s Japanese internment camps, spying on Martin Luther King, Jr., and the ‘red scare’ Palmer raids under President Wilson. Then again, what is more likely to violate people’s civil liberties than creating a Fourth Branch of government? Landis is a most worthy winner.”
—Mark Chenoweth, President and Chief Legal Officer, NCLA
For more information visit the King George III Prize page here.
ABOUT NCLA
NCLA is a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights group founded by prominent legal scholar Philip Hamburger to protect constitutional freedoms from violations by the Administrative State. NCLA’s public-interest litigation and other pro bono advocacy strive to tame the unlawful power of state and federal agencies and to foster a new civil liberties movement that will help restore Americans’ fundamental rights.
Joe Martyak New Civil Liberties Alliance 703-403-1111 joe.martyak@ncla.legal
Legal Disclaimer:
EIN Presswire provides this news content "as is" without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.
