Using strategic litigation to effect social change can be stunningly effective, capable of breaking down longstanding injustices and opening new paths of human rights protection and enforcement. But strategic litigation can be complex, time-consuming, expensive, and risky. It may fail outright. Or it may succeed, but engender a powerful backlash…

Roma children in the Czech Republic are funneled into so-called "practical schools"--dead-end institutions where they are taught a limited, low-level curriculum. The experience leaves students unqualified for all but the most basic jobs and traps generations in a cycle of poverty and hopelessness. In 1999, 18 children from the eastern…