Judge David S. Tatel, ’66, Talks About New Memoir
D.C. Circuit’s David Tatel Pairs Judging, Blindness in Memoir
Retired D.C. Circuit Judge David Tatel’s guide dog Vixen spends an hour-long interview sitting quietly under the table at a coffee shop in Washington’s NoMa neighborhood as cars blasting music and tourists rolling suitcases pass by her—aside from one brief outburst over a Shih Tzu on a walk.
The German Shepherd with a pink collar has spent five years with Tatel. He credits her with changing his life, from his views on the bond a human can share with an animal to his ability to take walks without another person present. She aptly graces the cover of Tatel’s book, “Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice,” due out Tuesday, posed upright and staring directly at the camera like, a very good dog.
Tatel, once floated as a possible contender for the Supreme Court, reflects in his memoir on his long career in civil rights law and on the bench for the appeals court often referenced as the second-highest court in the land.
Tatel, 82, also sharply criticizes the current Supreme Court, taking aim at recent decisions that undermine voting rights, and raising concern about the erosion of public trust in the institution.
Intertwined into those themes—or “braided,” as he calls it in his book—is his own personal journey of losing his vision. Tatel, who was raised in a Maryland suburb of Washington, was diagnosed as a child with a rare genetic disorder known as Retinitis pigmentosa, and lost his vision over time.
When he was appointed to the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit by President Bill Clinton, he became the first blind federal appeals court judge.
At the beginning of his nearly three-decade tenure, Tatel said in an interview there was “no question” he was “viewed as the blind judge in the D.C. Circuit.”
“After 30 years, people, I hope, viewed me as a really good judge on the D.C. Circuit who happened to be blind,” he said.
In his memoir, Tatel said he recused himself from a case just once because of his blindness. It was against the Treasury Department and was related to the inaccessibility of US currency for visually impaired people.
In two other cases involving how much one design resembled another, he writes that he didn’t recuse, but “in retrospect” he “should have.”
Read more at Bloomberg Law