The National Law Journal (NLJ) named Sidley to its 2020 “Appellate Hot List.” This is the thirteenth consecutive year Sidley has been on the list, which honors firms “boasting high-profile and high-stakes wins in the nation’s highest appellate courts.”
NLJ praised Sidley for representing a class of Detroit schoolchildren denied their fundamental right of access to literacy. In a historic decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution confers a fundamental right of access to literacy, and held that the schoolchildren stated a claim that they were deprived of this right. This was cited as “the most momentous circuit court decision in the field of education in decades.”
Sidley was one of the first law firms to establish a dedicated Supreme Court and Appellate practice. The firm is widely recognized as a trailblazer for addressing groundbreaking and complex questions of federal and state law in the United States Supreme Court, all federal courts of appeals and state appellate and supreme courts.