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The Repudiation Of Plato: A Lawyer's Guide To The Educational Rights Of Handicapped Children, Robert E. Shepherd Jr.

University of Richmond Law Review

Plato's solution for the handicapped children of Athens advanced some 2400 years ago was rejected by the Supreme Court of the United States in famous dictum in Meyer v. Nebraska as being "ideas. . . wholly different from those upon which our institutions rest .... " However, it took about half a century for the ultimate repudiation of the ideas espoused by the great philosopher as the Supreme Court's 1923 dictum finally bore fruit in federal court decisions establishing a constitutional right to education for handicapped children and in a congressional definition of such a right in the Education for …