Growing up, David S. Tatel, JD’66, imagined he would be a scientist like his father. But the civil rights movement and President John F. Kennedy’s call for young people to enter public service set Tatel on a different path—one that led him to law school, the practice of civil rights law, the Office for Civil Rights, and, eventually, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where he served as a judge until his retirement from the bench in 2023.

Yet, as Tatel writes in his new book, Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice (Little, Brown, 2024; excerpt below), there is a curious irony at the heart of his career. Through many of the years he spent fighting to protect the rights of marginalized groups, he thought of civil rights law as something for other people and not for him—even as he was losing his sight because of a progressive genetic disease called retinitis pigmentosa. Tatel was diagnosed with the condition at age 15; by the time he had reached his 30s, he could no longer see words on a page.

At the Office for Civil Rights, which he led from 1977 to 1979, Tatel worked to guide and enforce some of the nation’s first laws preventing discrimination against people with disabilities. “And here I was, the director of the office responsible for that,” Tatel says. “I had an obvious disability, yet I was hiding from it.” Even when he began using a cane and concealing his blindness became impossible, Tatel chose not to discuss his disability in public.

He would make different choices today. “Looking back,” he reflects in the book, “I regret my refusal to discuss my blindness and the shame I felt when others mentioned it. … I wasn’t a judge who was just like everyone else, and the life experiences born from my blindness were valuable, not shameful.” Writing Vision forced him to be more open about his visual impairment and its effects on his life than he had ever been before.

The book also offered Tatel an opportunity to look back on other aspects of his life and career. He recounts a memorable first date at Jimmy’s with his now-wife, Edie, as well as formative experiences in law school, where the intellectual environment was intense but invigorating. “Law felt like science, but with words, or like political science, but with rules,” he writes. “Throughout my years on the DC Circuit, I often found myself thinking and writing in ways I learned long ago in Chicago.”

As a judge on the DC Circuit, Tatel handled cases about some of the most complex and important issues facing the nation: the fate of prisoners at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, net neutrality, pollution, voting rights, and many others. In each instance, Tatel says, he tried to apply the law faithfully. Judicial restraint was his guiding philosophy, and it helped him grapple with the gravity of his position: “I wasn’t exercising my power,” Tatel explains. “I was exercising the power of the law, and I found that deeply comforting.”

Far less comforting, in Tatel’s view, is the current Supreme Court’s seeming abandonment of judicial restraint. He writes in Vision that his decision to retire from the DC Circuit stemmed in part from his concern about having to apply decisions whose reasoning seemed faulty and ideologically motivated. He mentions, for instance, Shelby County v. Holder and Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, which severely weakened key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, as well as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, which overturned previous rulings on abortion and affirmative action, respectively.

“I had no problem following Supreme Court decisions, even the ones that reversed me, for many years, because I respected the process they used,” Tatel says. But “when the court itself abandoned the principles of judging, I felt uncomfortable. I felt like I couldn’t, in good faith, apply those decisions.

“Hopefully,” he adds, “the current members of the court will come to realize that the integrity of the institution on which they serve is perhaps more important than their own ideological objectives.”

Retirement from the DC Circuit has opened new possibilities: In addition to writing Vision, Tatel has rejoined his former firm Hogan Lovells to do pro bono work as senior counsel. He is also enjoying long walks with Vixen, his guide dog since 2019.

He credits the seven-year-old German shepherd with not only offering him new independence but also making his blindness easier to discuss. “You can’t have a guide dog and not talk about it,” he says. “People want to talk about the dog.” (Including Tatel himself: “If talking too much about my dog is a crime,” he writes in Vision, “I plead guilty.”) Vixen has attracted lots of attention during publicity events for the book—she enjoys having her picture taken, Tatel notes—but “it has not gone to her head.”—S. A.

Close listening

As his vision worsened, Tatel came to rely on listening to do his work. In addition to his clerks—who dubbed themselves the “Tatel Tots”—he also hired a reader each year to help him digest case materials and draft opinions. (Many were former debaters, practiced in the art of speaking quickly.) Now, assistive technology like the iPhone VoiceOver function allows Tatel to navigate the digital world.

Soon after he lost his ability to see words on a page, Tatel discovered Talking Books—a forerunner of today’s audiobooks. Issued on vinyl records (and later floppy disks, cassettes, and CDs), Talking Books were a revelation: “For the first time in a long time, I could read on my own,” he writes.

Audiobooks remain a passion for Tatel—and he has gone from listener to narrator, having read the prologue and acknowledgments for the audio version of his book.—S. A.

Updated 01.09.2025 to correct Tatel’s audiobook narration role. 

Excerpt

From Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice by David S. Tatel

People sometimes ask what I experience with my eyes open. What do I see? It’s hard to explain. It’s not total darkness. It’s not a void. It’s like a thick, drab fog. Sometimes I think I’m aware of light, particularly outdoors on a sunny day, although maybe what I’m perceiving is just the sun’s warmth. I can’t tell whether the lights in the house are on or off. I can’t see shapes, faces, objects, or even movement. It’s just the same thick fog, extending to infinity in every direction.

But I do know what many things look like because I had my vision for so long. I still have vivid visual memories of growing up: the gray mouse that met its demise in the trap in our pantry; the brown and white cow my grandfather slaughtered in his butcher shop right in front of me; my mother’s long white Pall Mall cigarettes; the gigantic steaming locomotives at Union Station; Passover Seders with my aunts and uncles sitting around my grandparents’ huge table; the gaudy circus next to the railroad tracks; the model boat with our handmade brass fittings and varnished deck; El Misti; that toaster! I can also still see images of my parents’ love for each other: Dad tossing little Mom in the big waves of the Atlantic on the Jersey Shore; the two of them walking hand in hand on the beach; the candles they lit as they danced to “The Blue Danube” in our living room. All are lasting snapshots of my childhood. I draw on that glossary of images when I listen to others and conjure up a picture of what they’re describing. After all, “seeing” happens not in our eyes, but in our brains.

For my entire adult life, Edie, whose shiny auburn hair and bright blue eyes are embedded in my memory, has been my Describer-in-Chief. We’ve spent so much of our lives together that we have a deep reservoir of shared experiences she can draw on to help me see what she sees. “The woman at dinner looked a lot like my sister,” she might say. Or she might tell me that a sandy beach we’re visiting is even whiter than our Bermuda honeymoon beaches, and that the sky is the same blue as her eyes. She can’t describe everything, of course, so she focuses on the details she knows I’ll find interesting, curating images for me in much the same way she once curated The New Yorker.

My children and grandchildren have been describing things for me since they were very little, and they’ve grown into full-fledged audible artists. They all have their own descriptive styles. “It’s dark blue and light green mixed together. I don’t even have that color in my crayon box,” little Emily said as we stood hand in hand on the rim of Crater Lake. When Rebecca and I cross-country skied on the Mall, she painted the picture for me: “Dad, on our right there’s a huge oak tree. Its branches look like arms reaching in every direction, and every black branch is piled with snow. It’s just beautiful, all sparkling in the sun.” My then-six-year-old granddaughter Maya, perched in my lap as we sat on the dock, cupped my ear with her little hands and whispered, “Poppa, shhhhh. There’s a mama deer across the pond with a tiny baby fawn. It’s even smaller than my little brother.” Later she sketched a picture of the scene and traced my finger along the lines she’d drawn.

When my family describes these images to me, in my mind I definitely see them. I see the brown and white cows on gently sloping hills, the fallen tree snags deep in the forest, the bright yellow daffodils along the side of the highway, the swooping heron at the pond at sunrise, and the distant mountains lit up orange at sunset. My whole family uses words precisely and even poetically, choosing just the right adjectives and adverbs to let me see what they see. Constantly describing the world that I can’t see myself seems to have made them all into great describers—and terrific writers.

In 1991, with the help of my son Josh’s precise narration, I was the scribe on a fantastic sailing adventure in the British Virgin Islands skippered by a good friend and crewed by his son, two nephews, and Josh. At the end of each day, I’d add to our ship’s log from what Josh and the others told me, as well as what I could hear, smell, and feel—and whatever Blackbeard allusions I could come up with. Tapping away on my little Braille computer, I’d quiz the boys for more details, suggesting descriptions that they’d verify or refute. My log recorded, “A huge orange setting sun over sparkling turquoise seas … endless white beaches … hummingbirds in the trees … an underwater array of blue and yellow zebrafish … a dark, isolated cove that seems like the perfect spot for pirates.” It was as if I’d seen those things myself. Being blind amid an all-male crew and their strewn laundry and beer cans also had its upside. “What you can’t see can’t bother you,” I wrote in an entry intended for our absent women.

I’ve also been asked whether I dream in pictures. The answer is yes. In most of them, my vision is twenty-twenty, and I see the world in Technicolor. But in my nightmares, everything is black and white, and I’m blind and anxious, often about finding the right airport gate or getting lost in the dark.

In writing this memoir, Edie and I have talked about my career, my blindness, and the effects of both of those things on our family more than we ever did in the past sixty years. I’m sorry to say that for many of those years, I was a far less attentive, empathetic, and forthright person than I hope I am now. Back then, I was consumed with becoming an excellent lawyer, meeting my mentors’ expectations, and furthering the causes that I believed in. At the same time, it took an enormous amount of energy and effort—both deliberate and unconscious—to compensate for my waning vision. And the less I could see, the less I was able to help with even the small things around the house. I relied entirely on Edie to tend the home fires, which she did so well, and which allowed me to enjoy my time with the kids when I was home.

Edie thinks that as the women’s movement of the 1960s and ’70s unfolded, we were lucky that she was content to focus on parenting while our kids were young. “Maybe it wouldn’t have worked if we both were Type A professionals intent on establishing ourselves right then,” she says. She kept on teaching part-time through the births of our first three children. But after our fourth child, even part-time work became impossible to manage, so she gave up teaching for a time, and with it, her professional identity. None of that was easy. For a while she felt like she was known only as “David’s wife” and “the kids’ Mommy,” roles she adored, but which defined only a small part of who she is. Of course, she eventually made many new friends and carved out a meaningful life of her own. She never forgot her professional passions and the difference she wanted to make in children’s lives. When the kids were older, Edie returned to school for her PhD, and Dr. Tatel resumed teaching, this time at the university level. Then for years she worked as a teacher coach.

Edie is a very social person, but she’s also very private. Although she did confide her occasional despair to her sisters, few others would have suspected how much she was going through. Parenting four small children is hard enough. Add to that mix a husband who not only had an extremely demanding work and travel schedule but who also needed more and more help and you’ll begin to understand what Edie was dealing with. One of the few times she brought up her worries with a good friend, it convinced her that most other people just didn’t understand. When a recent eye exam disclosed that my vision loss was accelerating, Edie called her friend that evening and tried to express her anguish. “Oh, I know just what you mean,” the friend replied. “My husband can’t see very well, either, without his glasses.” She offered no shoulder to cry on. She asked no questions. That good friend was demoted to the reserve list.

So my disability was not mine alone. We shared it. Edie, our children, and eventually their spouses and our grandchildren—we were all in it together. It touched all of our lives. It was simultaneously a challenge and completely normal. Edie and I were both aware of—and worried about—the hassles and hazards we faced every day. At the same time, our adjustments became routine, and often even unconscious. Our kids, of course, knew nothing else. Blindness bound us tightly together. We read together. We walked together—a “Dad Walk,” the kids called it. We held hands. We still hold hands. When Vixen isn’t guiding me, even my youngest grandchildren naturally reach for my hand.

I adored taking my kids with me on business trips. They each came with me to New York. The shuttle flights that had become routine to me were thrilling to them. Even the taxi rides into the city excited them. We went to the top of the Empire State Building, found Eloise at the Plaza, watched the skaters at Rockefeller Center, and navigated lunch at the automat. Those times together were precious. As we walked through the city, I trusted them completely. We’d navigate together, with the kids confirming the numbers on the street signs we passed. When it came time to cross, I’d remind them to look both ways. When they said they were sure it was safe, we stepped out together into the street. My life was quite literally in the children’s hands.

Over the years, we went on many other excursions where the children were my eyes. Rebecca led me on snowshoes across a frozen lake with little Olivia, our first granddaughter, marching behind in our tracks. Emily took me to the top of Pikes Peak. Josh guided me bouldering and rock climbing. Stephanie and I went camping in the Bitterroot Range. (We’d both thought Edie was coming, too, but she feigned illness at the last minute, which I learned years later had been her real plan all along.) Stephanie was totally in charge of the route, our meals, and me. Later she said that she hadn’t been at all worried about my blindness, but the repeated lightning strikes up in the mountains had sure given her a fright.

As I look at my adult children today, I see Edie. They share her optimism, her cheerfulness, and most importantly, her amazing parenting skills. I couldn’t be prouder.

Excerpted from VISION by David S. Tatel. Copyright © 2024 by David S. Tatel. Used with permission of Little, Brown and Company. New York, NY. All rights reserved.