VISION

A distinguished jurist recounts a lifetime of trials in and out of the courtroom.

Dispense with the bit about justice being blind. Tatel, who has been blind for most of his legal career as a result of a degenerative retinal disease, has heard it all. Regarding that fact, he dedicates a bit of hard-won advice: “Don’t deny your challenges, embrace them.” The author’s principal challenges came in two forms: his growing blindness, first diagnosed when he was still in high school, and many years of trying to hide that blindness from colleagues and students, fearing that it would harm his career. By the time Bill Clinton appointed him to the Washington, D.C., circuit court, Tatel was well established; he had worked for years in corporate law while devoting countless pro bono hours to civil rights issues in the 1960s and beyond. “Despite my best efforts, my blindness had become part of the narrative,” writes the author, although he had long since learned to accommodate that blindness through a combination of technological aides (a Braille computer, for instance) and a powerful memory. Although his memoir is both affecting and inspiring, of particular interest to readers of a legal bent are Tatel’s well-informed criticism of the current Supreme Court’s conservative majority for its steady diminishment of voting rights and dismemberment of various provisions of the Voting Rights Act. A committed liberal, the author notes that the current Court’s insistence that the states enjoy "equal sovereignty" is an anachronism that the Constitution does not support, “invented, recently, not for principled reasons, but to produce the Court’s preferred outcomes.” He urges readers to remedy an ideologically corrupt Court by voting for legislators willing to fight for civil rights and other causes.

A provocative, well-written pleasure for students of contemporary jurisprudence.