ARTICLE BY PROFESSOR GARY GILDIN TO BE PUBLISHED BY NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR TRIAL ADVOCACY
February 2024 — Professor Gary S. Gildin has written the short article, “KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid) 2.0: TOTS (Tell Only the Story),” which will be published in the National Institute for Trial Advocacy’s Collective Wisdom: One Bit of Advice forthcoming compilation on Opening Statements. As with his previous two submissions to Collective Wisdom and his co-authored Third Edition of Trial Advocacy Basics, Professor Gildin’s article relies on recent discoveries in neuroscience to suggest how lawyers should craft opening statements that align with how the juror’s brain processes information and reaches decisions.
Professor Gary S. Gildin will be on sabbatical in the 2024-25 academic to develop his next work, tentatively titled Neuro Congruent Justice: Rethinking the American Trial, which will explore how the existing trial process and rules of evidence might be reformed to comport with the modern teachings of neuroscience.
Professor Gildin has been recognized among the nation’s leading teachers of advocacy skills, having received the Jacobson Award for Excellence in Teaching Trial Advocacy from the American Association for Justice as well as spearheading Dickinson Law’s receipt of the Emil Gumpert Award for Excellence in Trial Advocacy from the American College of Trial Lawyers. Professor Gildin co‐authored the treatise Trial Advocacy Basics, as well as the racial profiling Case File Stucky v. Conlee, Parsell and NITA City, published by the National Institute for Trial Advocacy. Prof. Gildin has taught in trial advocacy trainings for the International Criminal Court, the ABA Central and East European Law Initiative, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Public Defenders Association of Pennsylvania, Prof. Gildin’s current research agenda examines how to adapt tenets of persuasion in light of recent discoveries in neuroscience and cognitive psychology. He also focuses his teaching and scholarship on accountability for deprivations of civil liberties, including the theoretical and practical foundations for securing greater rights and remedies under state constitutions, and was awarded a U.S. Canada Fulbright Grant to serve as visiting chair in international humanitarian law, University of Ottawa. Prof. Gildin has continued to engage in pro bono litigation on behalf of people alleging infringement of their constitutional rights, including arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court in Bowen v. Roy, and before the Third Circuit in the racial profiling case Raphael Christopher v. Frederick Nestlerode et al.