Program Book for the 250th Anniversary - Flipbook - Page 22
GARY GILDIN
Gary S. Gildin is Professor of Law and Dean Emeritus at Penn State’s Dickinson Law, where he held the G. Thomas and Anne
G. Miller Chair in Advocacy and served as Director of the Miller Center for Public Interest Law and Advocacy. The courses
Gildin taught included Protection of Individual Rights Under State Constitutions.
Gildin authored the chapters on 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); The Supreme Court and Religious Liberty: The Competing Visions of William Penn and Chief
Justice John Bannister Gibson, published in The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania: Life and Law in the Commonwealth, 16842017, John Hare ed. (2018); and Coda to William Penn’s Overture: Safeguarding Non-mainstream Religious Liberty Under the
Pennsylvania Constitution, 4 University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law 81 (2001).
Gildin also has written more generally on protecting religious liberty of non-mainstream faiths under state law in The
Sanctity of Religious Liberty of Minority Faiths under State Constitutions: Three Hypotheses, 6 University of Maryland Law
Journal on Race, Religion, Gender and Class 21 (2006); The Rise of State Law Sanctuary for Minority Religious Liberty in the
Wake of the Fall of Federal Constitutional Protection of Non-Mainstream Faiths, published in Democracy and Religion: Free
Exercise and Diverse Visions (Kent State University Press 2004); and A Blessing in Disguise: Protecting Minority Faiths
Through State Religious Freedom Non-Restoration Acts, 23 Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 411 (Spring 2000).
Gildin served as counsel for plaintiff in Bowen v. Roy, 476 U.S. 693 (1986) (Counsel of Record), challenging the requirement
that an Abenaki Indian provide a Social Security Number for his daughter, Little Bird of the Snow, as a condition of receiving
public benefits as violative of the Free Exercise Clause of the United States Constitution, and Blackhawk v. Pennsylvania
State Game Commission, 381 F.3d 202 (3rd Cir. 2004), challenging the permit fee for a Native American’s possession of
black bears used for religious purposes as a deprivation of Free Exercise of Religion.
