PROFESSOR GILDIN PRESENTS ON LITIGATION OF RIGHTS UNDER STATE CONSTITUTIONS AT THE 2025 AALS ANNUAL MEETING IN SAN FRANCISCO
January 2025 — Professor Gary S. Gildin delivered an invited presentation on “Private Remedies for Violation of State Constitutional Rights: Opportunities and Obstacles” at the session on The Future of Private Civil Rights Enforcement at the 2025 AALS Annual Meeting. The AALS Section on Litigation and Section on Minority Rights co-sponsored the session.
Gildin first identified how decisions of the United States Supreme Court, combined with the inaction of the United States Congress, have both contracted rights secured by the United States Constitution and undermined the ability of citizens to successfully redress deprivations of guaranteed liberties through civil lawsuits in federal court.
Gildin argued that the philosophy and interpretive methodology used by the United States Supreme Court to narrowly construe the federal Constitution further legitimize the authority of state courts to find broader rights under state constitutions. He then identified the prospects for and impediments to three mechanisms that could empower citizens to file suits in state court to obtain damages and injunctive relief for violation of the state constitution — free from the United States Supreme Court’s remedy-defeating jurisprudence: 1) causes of action created by the state legislature; 2) causes of action approved by the state judiciary; and 3) causes of action established by amendment to the state constitution triggered by citizen initiative.
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.