PROFESSOR GARY GILDIN'S ARTICLE PUBLISHED IN BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE’S STATE COURT REPORT
March 2024 — Professor Gary S. Gildin’s article, “A Primer on Advocating Independent State Constitutional Remedies,” has been published in the Brennan Center for Justice’s State Court Report. The article sets forth the criteria by which state courts adjudicating claimed deprivations of rights secured by state constitutions legitimately may decline to follow decisions of the United States Supreme Court that undermine recovery of damages for violation of federal constitutional rights.
Gildin’s article concludes, “When the patchwork of Supreme Court decisions is fashioned into a single quilt, the innocent citizen who has suffered harm from the trammeling of their federal constitutional rights often is left remediless. Only by refusing to blindly follow the Court’s interpretations of Section 1983 and implied causes of action under the federal Constitution will state courts give voice to Chief Justice John Marshall’s admonition in Marbury v. Madison: “The very essence of civil liberty certainly consists in the right of every individual to claim the protection of the laws, whenever he receives an injury. One of the first duties of government is to afford that protection.”
Professor Gary S. Gildin teaches Civil Liberties Litigation as well as Protection of Individual Rights Under State Constitutions. He is the author of Religious Freedom Under Article I Sections 3 and 4 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, published in THE PENNSYLVANIA CONSTITUTION: A TREATISE ON INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES, Ken Gormley and Joy G. McNally eds. (Second Edition 2020) and contributed to the Brief of Amici Curiae Law Professors David S. Cohen, Gary S. Gildin, Seth F. Kreimer, Jules Lobel, Robert Reinstein in William Penn School District et al. v. Pennsylvania Department of Education et al., No. 587 M.D. 2014 (Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania), in which Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer ruled that the system of funding public education violated the fundamental right to meaningful education under Pennsylvania Constitution.