Our Litigators of the Week are Sidley Austin’s Carter Phillips and Tacy Flint and Public Counsel director Mark Rosenbaum, who prevailed before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in a decision that the Washington Post described as “historic” and “groundbreaking,” that NPR termed “a remarkable victory” and the New York Times called “a major ruling.”

The trio represent students from some of Detroit’s worst-performing public schools. They asked the court to recognize that the U.S. Constitution provides a fundamental right to a basic minimum education—a question that has been often alluded to, but never decided, by the Supreme Court.