NCLA Chairman of the Board, The Honorable Janice Rogers Brown (left), and Steve Dewey (right) at the awarding of NCLA’s King George III prize at the James Madison Memorial Building, Washington, DC, June 10, 2026.
The New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights legal group founded in 2018, was created to legally challenge unconstitutional and unlawful power of state and federal agencies, collectively known as the “Administrative State.” In honor of the 250th anniversary of our nation’s birth, NCLA initiated an online survey with its followers to choose the worst violator of our civil liberties throughout the entire history of the United States. From a list of 32 notorious violators of our constitutional rights, survey participants selected James Landis as the worst in our nation’s history.
Most Americans have probably never heard of James Landis, so why did NCLA’s legally astute followers choose him as the worst violator of our civil liberties in American history? In short, Landis is considered by NCLA and its followers as the architect of the modern American administrative state. He was a leading force behind FDR’s New Deal that created 69 new federal agencies and a leading legal proponent of administrative government. He drafted laws establishing new powers for regulatory agencies and even led two federal agencies. He served as Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (1933-34) and as Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (1935-1937) during the initial five years of FDR’s presidency.
More importantly, Landis may be considered as the most consequential force behind the concept of the “Fourth Branch” of government, i.e. the “Administrative State.” He argued that the growing complexity of modern society required expert agencies capable of exercising all of the powers of the three branches of government – the legislative, the executive, and the judicial powers – effectively creating what he described as a Fourth Branch of government. NCLA suggests that our Founding Fathers omitted such a branch of government, because they wanted a government free from the authoritarian administrative rule of King George III!
NCLA started its King George III prize in 2021 on an annual basis for the worst violator of civil liberties for a specific year. Past winners of NCLA’s King George III prize:
2021 – New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Center for Disease Control Director Nina Witkofsky (jointly) for their involvement in COVID-era lockdowns and gross infringement on constitutional rights.
2022 – National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci (landslide winner) for his advocacy of unlawful and unconstitutional COVID policies.
2023 – U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland for his political weaponization of the U.S. Department of Justice.
2024 – Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler for his extreme regulatory overreach and infringement on data privacy.
Since its founding in 2018, NCLA has won seven cases in the U.S. Supreme Court – two through its own litigation and five with amicus curiae briefs. Most notably, NCLA’s litigation in Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce persuaded the Supreme Court to overturn the 40-year-old Chevron doctrine in June 2024. This decision restores the separation of powers by curtailing the power of federal agencies to interpret the laws they administer and that courts should exercise their independent interpretation of ambiguous laws as required by the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) of 1946. The decision will likely have far-reaching effects across the country, from environmental regulation to healthcare costs. NCLA has also achieved dozens of victories in federal appeals courts through both original litigation and amicus briefs.
Steve Dewey is a fellow at the Ben Franklin Fellowship, founder of GeoFinancial Trends, LLC (www.geofinancialtrends.org) and writes on Substack (stevedewey.substack.com). He can be reached at steve@geofinancialtrends.org
