EP. 137: A VISION FOR JUSTICE
WITH JUDGE DAVID S. TATEL
A noted civil rights lawyer and federal judge discusses how he has navigated both his legal career and personal life as a blind individual, along the way championing voting rights, educational equality, and disability rights.
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Episode Summary
The second half of the 20th century saw monumental shifts in civil rights in the United States, with the end of legalized racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement affecting all spheres of life, from education to health care to housing to marriage and more.
Judge David S. Tatel is a civil rights lawyer who has contributed to key advancements in voting rights, educational equality, and disability rights. Over the course of his five-decade career, he has served as Director of the National Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, as Director of the Office for Civil Rights during the Carter administration, and as a federal judge on the D.C. Circuit, considered the second highest court in America.
Judge Tatel also happens to be blind, due to a rare genetic condition called retinitis pigmentosa. In 2024, he published a book titled Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice.
Over the course of our conversation, Judge Tatel opens up about how he has wrestled with vision impairment in both his legal career and his personal life. He discusses what it was like to be diagnosed with an incurable, progressive, blinding disease as a teenager, how he struggled to make sense of his identity as a blind individual even as his career was taking off, his philosophy as a lawyer, how his beautiful relationship with his wife and children have helped him navigate the world, and how he met his guide dog, Vixen. Judge Tatel's legacy is one of judicial integrity, a lifelong commitment to equality, and a testament to the boundless potential of individuals living with disabilities.
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Judge Tatel has served on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since October 1994. He assumed senior status on May 16, 2022.
Judge Tatel earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and his J.D. from the University of Chicago in 1966. Following law school, Judge Tatel was an instructor at the University of Michigan Law School and then joined the firm Sidley, Austin, Burgess & Smith in Chicago. Leaving private practice in 1969, Judge Tatel first served as Director of the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and then Director of the National Committee. He was the Director of the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare during the Carter Administration. When he returned to private practice in 1979, Judge Tatel joined Hogan & Hartson, where he founded and headed the firm’s education practice until his appointment to the D.C. Circuit.
Judge Tatel co-chairs the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Science, Technology and Law. He is a member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In the past, he chaired the boards of The Spencer Foundation and The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Among many other activities, Judge Tatel also previously served on the Board of the Federal Judicial Center and the Judicial Advisory Board of the American Society of International Law. -
In this episode, you will hear about:
• 3:45 - Judge Tatel’s experience of being diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa as a teenager
• 15:33 - The inspiration that led Judge Tatel to focus his legal career on civil rights
• 22:47 - Judge Tatel’s experience of progressively losing his vision while ascending in his legal career
• 28:05 - Visual elements of life that Judge Tatel misses and how he now “experiences” vision
• 33:12 - Why Judge Tatel regrets concealing the truth about his blindness early in his career
• 37:01 - How Judge Tatel’s blindness has influenced his civil rights work
• 44:45 - Judge Tatel’s concerns about the future of democracy in the United States
• 46:27 - The ways in which getting a guide dog late in life changed Judge Tatel’s sense of freedom and his perspective on blindness
• 49:06 - Judge Tatel’s advice to his former self
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enry Bair: [00:00:01] Hi, I'm Henry Bair.
Tyler Johnson: [00:00:02] And I'm Tyler Johnson.
Henry Bair: [00:00:04] And you're listening to The Doctor's Art, a podcast that explores meaning in medicine. Throughout our medical training and career, we have pondered what makes medicine meaningful. Can a stronger understanding of this meaning create better doctors? How can we build healthcare institutions that nurture the doctor patient connection? What can we learn about the human condition from accompanying our patients in times of suffering?
Tyler Johnson: [00:00:27] In seeking answers to these questions, we meet with deep thinkers working across healthcare, from doctors and nurses to patients and healthcare executives those who have collected a career's worth of hard earned wisdom probing the moral heart that beats at the core of medicine. We will hear stories that are by turns heartbreaking, amusing, inspiring, challenging, and enlightening. We welcome anyone curious about why doctors do what they do. Join us as we think out loud about what illness and healing can teach us about some of life's biggest questions.
Henry Bair: [00:01:02] The second half of the 20th century saw monumental shifts in civil rights in the United States, with the end of legalized racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement touching all parts of life from education to health care to housing to marriage and more. Judge David Tatel is a civil rights lawyer who has contributed to key advancements in voting rights, educational equality, and disability rights. He has served as director of the National Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, as director of the office for Civil Rights during the Carter administration, and as a federal judge on the D.C. circuit, considered the second highest court in America, just below the Supreme Court, spanning over five decades. His career highlights include upholding the Voting Rights Act, enforcing the landmark Brown versus Board of Education decision that ensured minority students had equal access to quality education, expanding protections for marginalized populations against disproportionate environmental harms, and defending the individuals with Disabilities Education Act. At this point, you're probably wondering why we're speaking to him on this show. That's because Judge Tatel also happens to be blind due to a rare genetic condition called retinitis pigmentosa. In 2024, he published a book titled vision a memoir of Blindness and Justice.
Henry Bair: [00:02:30] Over the course of our conversation, Judge Tatel opens up about how he has wrestled with vision impairment both throughout his legal career and in his personal life. He discusses what it was like to be diagnosed with an incurable, progressive, blinding disease as a teenager, how he has wrestled with making sense of his identity as a blind individual even as his career was taking off. How his mind processes the mountains of information required in his day to day work. His philosophy as a lawyer, how his beautiful relationship with his wife and children have helped him literally navigate the world, and how he met his guide dog, Vixen, who actually joins us today to. You'll hear her intermittently romping around in the background. We also touch briefly on his perspectives about the future of democracy in America. Coincidentally, apropos to this episode being released on Election Day 2024, Judge Tatel's legacy is one of judicial integrity, a lifelong commitment to equality, and a testament to the boundless potential of individuals living with disabilities.
Henry Bair: [00:03:40] Judge Tatel, thank you for taking the time to join us and welcome to the show.
Judge David Tatel: [00:03:44] Thank you.
Henry Bair: [00:03:45] We're going to spend a substantial amount of time diving into your civil rights work. But of course, vision impairment has been an integral part of it all. So let's start there. Can you tell us how you first noticed that something was amiss with your vision? And can you set the stage for us and tell us what your life was like around that time?
Judge David Tatel: [00:04:06] It was the late 1940s in Washington, D.C. my father was in Washington working at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab on the war effort. He had just gotten his Ph.D. from Stanford, actually, and he and my mom moved to Washington. I was born in 42, and by the time I was 6 or 7 years old, as early as that, everybody noticed that little David couldn't see very well at night, in the dark. And no one thought much of it, but it persisted. You know, some people said to me when I said I couldn't see something at night, they said, well, you know, nobody can see in the dark. But it became an issue. My parents started to worry about it. They took me to ophthalmologists, but they didn't have a clue. They all told me to eat lots of carrots, which I did. And I, by the way, still like carrots, but I don't think they did any good. So by the time I was maybe 12 or 13, there were other signs that I was noticing. For example, I was I was an avid baseball player, and I remember one day on the baseball field near the school I went to, I was in the outfield and I got hit by a ball which I didn't see coming. You know, they were clues like that that led us to think something was wrong. But not until 1957, when my mother took me to NIH. Did they diagnose a retinitis pigmentosa. That was the first time they ever put a name to it. They didn't know much about it at the time, they thought that my eyesight would slowly decline. They thought it would plateau from time to time. They didn't know whether I would lose my sight or not. That's what I knew in 1957.
Henry Bair: [00:06:08] So since your diagnosis, we now know a little bit more about retinitis pigmentosa, otherwise called RP. We know that it's a group of rare inherited eye diseases in which genetic mutations cause progressive degeneration of the retina, specifically the photoreceptor cells at the back of the eye that are responsible for capturing light and transmitting it as neural signals to the brain. Unfortunately, as was the case back then, we still don't have much in the way of treatments. What was it like back then to be told that you had an irreversible, untreatable, progressive eye disease that would certainly end in total blindness.
Judge David Tatel: [00:06:53] Well, let me just say one more thing and then I'll talk about that. So, you know, as I explain in the book, they have identified my particular mutation. We know exactly where it is on the RPG gene, which is a very large gene. I think it's got 60,000 base pairs and it's just two mixed up letters. That was it. So going back to your question, you know, one of the interesting things about writing a memoir is that it forces you to think really hard about things you hadn't thought much about. So I was 15 years old then, and now I'm 82. And so while writing this book, I had to recreate in the best way I could what I was told then, because there are no other witnesses. My mother died. The physician isn't around. There are no records that that I know of at NIH. This was before there was a National Eye Institute. But the best I can remember is that my reaction was, well, first of all, it was a terrible day. I was at NIH all day. I would rather have been with my friends. So that was number one. Number two, the tests were pretty unpleasant, particularly the ERG, which was extremely uncomfortable then. And so I was a grouchy 15 year old that day. And then I take, you know, my mother goes into the office first, so I'm left out in the lobby kind of wondering what's going on. And then after a while, he calls me in and he explains to me what this is. One of the things they say in the book is that when I say that, the doctors told me that I, they didn't really know whether I'd lose my sight. Is that what I wanted to hear, or is that what I did hear? I mean, I don't even remember him ever saying the word blind.
Judge David Tatel: [00:08:46] And you know what? What 15 year old wants to hear, he's going to lose his eyesight. So for whatever reason, I. I left being annoyed about the disruption in my life that day and less worried about the future because frankly, except for these slight problems, I. I was functioning just fine. I could read I was accommodating to night time vision and things like that, and I went home to my friends and went back to playing baseball. And then every year, my mother insisted that I go back to NIH for another test. And I also over time, I went other places. I went to mass Ioneer, and then I also went to the Wilmer Eye Clinic for a while. So I had lots of tests, and I developed a whole series of tricks for hiding my visual disability. I didn't want to talk about it. I didn't want to be different from my friends, and I had lots of tricks for covering up my visual disability so I don't have to talk about it. I just didn't want to be different. And then as I got a little older and started college and law school, I then began to worry that this might adversely affect my career. So I still didn't talk about it. It was a big secret. And so I really didn't have anybody to talk to. It wasn't until I met my wife and disclosed to her while we were dating what I had. And she was really the first person I ever really sat down and talked to about this. That was the first time and and for many years, the last time.
Tyler Johnson: [00:10:23] You know, it's interesting. So I'm a medical oncologist, a chemotherapy doctor. And listening to you describe the experience of hearing this news when you were 15 reminds me of I took care. This is very unusual for me, but I took care once of a woman who was only 19 years old and she had been diagnosed. She had sort of nonspecific abdominal pain, bounced around from doctor to doctor, eventually ended up in the emergency room, got a CT scan that led to a surgery which led to a biopsy, and it turned out that she had. At the time of her diagnosis, she had metastatic gastric cancer. So she comes to meet me in the clinic and having seen this in patients before, albeit never in someone who was 19, I had this sort of sense of what was coming right. And so I sat down and had this discussion where I said, hey, you know, I need to inform you that the cancer has spread and it's not curable. We can't do surgery, we have to do chemotherapy, whatever. And it was just very clear to me when I got done describing this that it had not landed with the force that I expected because I got done. And she was like, okay, yeah, that sounds fine.
Tyler Johnson: [00:11:26] We can get started on chemo, whatever you think. Yeah, I remember actually really struggling because I felt like I had this. I mean, this sounds so bizarre to say, but I felt like I had this almost ethical obligation to make her understand that it was more serious than how she was acting like that. This was really a big deal, right? But in retrospect, it's been interesting for me to recognize that whatever we may think as doctors, that we may know about a person's path forward when they receive a diagnosis, we can't tell the future, and we don't necessarily really know anything about how something is going to unfold. And so I think we need to be candid. We need to be honest. And actually it became, you know, in a lot of ways she sort of ended up having the upper hand because, as it turned out, she then went on to get very light chemotherapy for the next 3 or 4 years and in effect, lived for many years as if she had didn't have cancer. She participated in beauty pageants and went to college and had boyfriends and did all of the normal things that you do. And so I guess she ended up being the wiser of the two of us.
Judge David Tatel: [00:12:30] Yeah. Well, as a patient, I mean, obviously, I think it's really important that physicians totally disclose to their patients what they know, of course, but here's but I think I've never been critical of the doctor then, because they didn't know a whole lot about R.P. at the time. And also, I was 15. So did he tell my mother more than he told me? I actually don't know that my mother didn't talk about it. And and I've thought about that a lot while writing the book. So why didn't she talk to me about it? Well, I think one reason may be that we were told it was X-linked and that I probably inherited it from her. So hears this. My mother suddenly is told her son could lose his sight because of her genes. And so it was obviously extremely complicated for her. So she seemed, as a mom, to have focused on ensuring that I live the most successful life I could. She never, ever limited my choices. I mean, she even let me get a driver's license when I probably shouldn't have. You know, it was a good thing in a not so good thing. She was very supportive but unwilling to talk about it, and I certainly didn't want to talk about it.
Henry Bair: [00:13:53] Well, I mean, for whatever it's worth, and coming from a place of just total admiration, it's hard to imagine you having led a more successful career, just given how you know how much you've done despite the impairment that you've you've lived with at this point. You know, I would love to explore that a little bit for the benefit of our listeners, just to know the context of your work. Right. So setting the vision impairment, which was slowly progressing. Right. And again, as an aside, our piece typically starts from the peripheral vision and slowly closes in. And typically the central vision is is affected last.
Judge David Tatel: [00:14:30] Yes, that's exactly what happened to me.
Henry Bair: [00:14:33] So I would imagine that during college and then maybe during law school and during the early Years of your legal career, you could still more or less function as you mentioned, you had these tricks because you still had your central vision. So more or less you could still carry on your studies and your early work. Is that correct?
Judge David Tatel: [00:14:51] Yeah, except that I had a very odd for quite a few years, maybe two decades. Yes, I could sense my peripheral vision going, but I also lost a lot of central vision. And one of the ways I got around was by looking left and right all the time. So I did have enough peripheral vision. And in fact, in certain circumstances, I had more than I did central vision. And people noticed that me walking that way, you know, I'd look left, look right. So I must have had a I mean, my the progression of my RP must have been slightly different because it was although my peripheral vision was limited, it still helped me navigate before I got a cane.
Henry Bair: [00:15:33] Yeah. RP is not one single disease entity, right? It's a group of entities and it definitely manifest differently in different patients. So going back to your legal career, you've really defined your career on civil rights and social justice, especially during the 60s. 70s 80s really pivotal moments in the history of the United States in terms of civil rights. How did your career move in that direction? Like, can you remember any moments that really defined your decision to to make that such a core part of your work?
Judge David Tatel: [00:16:05] Yes. Very clearly. Um, I went to the University of Michigan prepared to be a scientist like my dad, but I got there in 1960 and the civil rights movement was emerging and strengthening. There were freedom rides and sit ins and and I had summer jobs in the Kennedy administration. I was one of I was very lucky to be one of thousands of, of college students who had summer jobs. And, you know, the papers were full of civil rights marches and a great deal of focus on the Justice Department and the role of the lawyers in the Justice Department going south. You know, the very famous films of of the deputy attorney general confronting George Wallace. And so I very quickly became fascinated with that, and all my friends were into it. You know, we were freshmen at college. We were into what was happening in the country. We were all, for the first time in our lives, reading the newspapers. And and there was a great deal of activity in the Ann Arbor campus. Within a year, I decided I wanted to be involved in that. I loved science, and I kept up my science and math. But I switched to political science because I felt that going to law school would give me the career I wanted. I wanted to be like those lawyers in the Kennedy Justice Department. They were my role model at that point. That was significant for me because it led. It led to law school and eventually to the civil rights jobs I had always hoped I would get. All the while, you know, with my sight getting worse and worse.
Tyler Johnson: [00:17:46] You know, I think it's really also important just to point out here, I once read a column a number of years ago that said that you can tell that an achievement is truly historic, when what once seemed unimaginable comes to have seemed inevitable. That is to say that, you know, something that was actually very much contingent comes to seem like something that, of course it was going to happen. There was no other way that it possibly could have happened. And I feel like in a lot of ways that has happened with the civil rights movement, in the sense that we look back now and most of the changes that came as a result of the civil rights movement, both cultural changes and legal changes, we sort of can't imagine the world without them. Right. And so it comes to seem like that part of history was always fixed. It was always going to be that way. But I think it's important to point out that if you have just a little bit of longer historical memory, if you go back, you know, even a hundred years, let alone 200 years. And of course, none of this is to suggest that we have arrived in terms of these questions. Obviously we haven't, but it's just to say that it is only because of the work, of course, mostly of those who were being actively oppressed and then also their allies. And this includes a whole panoply of people, right? That extends from legal scholars to civil rights organizers, to orators to religious leaders. And there's a whole host of people. But that history really was contingent, and it could have turned out in many, many different ways. And the fact that it turned out the way that it did is a testament to the dogged determination and passion and sacrifice of those who were willing to work for those causes. Yeah.
Judge David Tatel: [00:19:33] But, you know, I think for, for black people in the 40s and 50s, I'm not sure it seemed inevitable. I mean, we had had a whole century of Jim Crow after the Civil War. What happened in the 1960s? There's so many factors that led to its success then. It's not just that the civil rights movement emerged postwar, which had a lot to do with it. Citizens fought in World War II and came back to segregated America. There were lots of reasons why the civil rights movement emerged in the South, and fortunately, it emerged at a time when we had an administration, the Kennedy administration and courts, both nationally and in the South, that were responsive to it and a Congress that helped make it happen. In fact, I explain in the book that, you know, fortunately for the country in the 60s, all three branches of government, the courts, the Congress and the executive branch work together to pass and enforce civil rights laws. So, you know, the forces were properly aligned then?
Tyler Johnson: [00:20:41] Yeah. And just to make sure that I'm being clear here or that I was being clear in my first comment, very much to the point. I didn't mean to suggest that the legal outcomes as they happened were inevitable, but precisely that they could have turned out dramatically differently, and that the fact that they turned out the way that they did it was only because of the actions of those who were working towards them. To that point, though, can can you just paint for us a little bit of a more granular picture? What was it like to be working on these legal cases at the time that they were happening to be, as it were, on the legal front lines of the civil rights movement? What was that like?
Judge David Tatel: [00:21:22] Well, by the time I became an active civil rights lawyer, it was around 1969 or 70. And it was through the 70s that I was practicing civil rights law, both in a law firm and as head of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a national civil rights group, and the office for Civil Rights during the Carter administration. And at that point during the 70s, you know, tremendous amount of progress continued to be made. We had a problem in starting in 68 with Richard Nixon. Nixon ran on a you know, his southern strategy was anti-busing. And the Nixon administration was not sympathetic and was actually, you know, hostile to civil rights progress. But fortunately, the courts held their own, as did Congress. And, you know, by the time Nixon left in disgrace and Jimmy Carter was elected once again, we had branches of government working together, although that was beginning to fray also as a result of Richard Nixon. The courts were less hospitable to civil rights issues than they have been in the 60s. And then Ronald Reagan gets elected and and then suddenly we have the same three branches of government that were so critical to civil rights progress in the 60s, all aligned against it in the 80s and 90s.
Tyler Johnson: [00:22:47] So just from a personal standpoint, as you've begun to outline, right, you're working your way through law school and then eventually you graduate. You're working on these cases for some time in private practice, and we can get more into the the details of the sort of which things came one after another a little bit later on. But the point for this question is to say that as all of these things are happening, you are also simultaneously experiencing the slow decay of first year peripheral and then your central vision. And as this is happening, you are working in fields where your site is integral, at least to the way that most people operate, for example, as a lawyer, write, so much of what you're doing is reading and writing. And of course, there are ways for people who do not have their sight to do those things. But you're having to make that transition as you are progressing in your career within these fields. And as a person who has never been through that experience, I can only very faintly and vaguely even try to imagine what that would be like. But can you paint for us a little bit of a picture of what it was like to be experiencing those changes as you were moving along in those professions?
Judge David Tatel: [00:24:02] Well, through law school and my early years of practice, I was functioning as a sighted person, even though I had these problems. You know, I had some tricks, like I took notes, for example, with a black pen because I could see it better. It helped if I was sitting in an area with bright light. Contrast helped a lot. By my mid-thirties, my eyesight took a dramatic decline. I'd say in six months it went from, you know, I was able to function to that. I couldn't. And I remember the day I had to say to my secretary, I said, Cheryl, I just you need to start reading this stuff to me because I can't read it anymore. That's when I, I decided I should learn Braille. So I got a Braille tutor and tried to learn Braille. Then I started exploring different kinds of technology. And I mentioned that because the end of the story is that technology was turns out to have been critical for me and other blind people. But one of the first pieces of technology I had was a device that enlarged print on a screen. You had a TV set and you put the paper down on it, and it showed up on the screen in bigger letters, and you could contrast it. So I could read that for a while. It was a very clunky kind of device, and I got very good at using Dictaphones, for example, I learned to dictate briefs and to edit and things like that.
Judge David Tatel: [00:25:29] And also at the same time, I was using my secretary to read to me. I discovered the Library of Congress Talking Books program, which was really important because I loved to read and because of my declining sight, reading was getting harder and harder. And by then Eddie and I had two little girls, and reading bedtime stories was harder. But with talking books, I could I could go back to reading with my kids. We just both listened. So it was technology that began to make a big difference. And, you know, as I said, writing the book has made me go back and think about what was I thinking at the time. I mean, it's very hard to recreate it, but I know that I was I was determined to continue my civil rights work. It's something I really, really wanted to do. We had children by then. I needed to be successful Cessful and learning Braille and learning to use books and things like that just seemed like they were necessary. They were things they just had to do if I was going to be successful. I kept putting off using a cane. That was a step that was very, very difficult to take. I probably should have started using a cane when I was 35, but I didn't. I finally, in 1980, I was in my late 30s, bit the bullet because I had to go on a trip and there was no way I could go by myself and I couldn't take someone with me.
Judge David Tatel: [00:26:58] And I finally bit the bullet and learned to use a cane. In the next 40 years, I got really good with the cane. In fact, I'll just give you an example I. In 1992, I took a sabbatical from my firm and taught at Stanford, and I got pretty good at my cane on campus. I mean, I could get around the law school with it. And, you know, I could make it to the Faculty Club for lunch because I had figured out the sidewalks and things like that. And by that time, by the way, I was running, I had been running for a long time with friends who we ran with a tether, and I had a bunch of friends in Palo Alto who I would run with, and my friend and I, we would run. We had a tether looped over my arm and his arm and, you know, if we came to a curb, he would tell me, you know, step up. And I became, you know, a pretty good successful runner, thanks to my friends and also a good cane user. So, you know, I, I was able to adjust to it. It wasn't easy, but it did make my life much better than if I hadn't done it.
Tyler Johnson: [00:28:05] So let me ask you this question as your sight continued to fade over time, and maybe this question seems, I don't know, romanticized or simplistic or something, but I am genuinely curious. Were there particular sites that you found yourself really missing, like things that that your ability to see this particular scene or this particular thing was slipping away and that that really affected you particularly?
Judge David Tatel: [00:28:39] That's a really good question actually, because which allows me to explain something else here. Well, first of all, since I wasn't blind from birth, I have lots of visual memories. You know, I have a whole collection in my head of what things look like. And also, my wife, Edie, became my primary describer. I mean, Edie just she was able to tell me what I was looking at. And since we shared visual memory, she was able to compare things to what she knew I knew. And then my kids became fabulous at that. The children just automatically would describe things to me. I mean, for example, if if I was down in Balans with the kids, they would they one of them would inevitably say, hey, dad, the bays in front of us, and there's a flock of birds and some fog is coming in. Or they would describe the palm trees to me, or, you know, the flowers that they were seeing. So I wasn't missing anything. At least I didn't feel like I was, because I had this wonderful family of awesome describers. And so what I miss because I don't want to make this sound romantic because it's not, I say very clearly in the beginning of the book, I'd really rather not be blind. I mean, I'd like, what do I miss? You ask what I miss. I'd like. I'd like to play tennis. I'd really like to play tennis. My wife plays pickleball. Now I'd like to play pickleball with her. I mean, I'm a big reader. I would love to be able to walk into a bookstore and wander around looking at books, opening up books that look interesting, paging through them, deciding what I might like to read. I can't do that. I really, really miss that. There's a lot of things I miss, but my family has helped fill in the gaps as much as is humanly possible.
Henry Bair: [00:30:36] I think in your book you also write about how much you enjoyed skiing. Yeah, and I was surprised by how much you were able to continue skiing. Apparently, you write about this organization or group that facilitates skiing for visually impaired individuals. Yeah, that was pretty remarkable. Yeah, it's.
Judge David Tatel: [00:30:54] All over the West now. In fact, they're required because of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Ski resorts have to have them. And they're pretty well developed. These ski programs, in fact, you know, as my eyesight was declining, my skiing was getting worse because speed is critical to good skiing. Right. If you ski too slowly, it it's hard to make turns. It's it's awkward. You need speed to make it work. And as my sight was declining, I was skiing slower and slower because it was harder and harder. But once I had a guide, I mean within a week of my first week of skiing with a guide, I was skiing as well as I had before because I was able to ski fast again.
Henry Bair: [00:31:32] Yeah, that's really incredible. You know, as someone who works right now, I'm. I work in an eye hospital, and we treat a lot of people with irreversible, progressive vision loss. Right. Not just, of course, yes, but all sorts of inherited and acquired retinal disorders. Glaucomas, neurological disorders. We often don't hear the personal stories of people who are visually impaired and how you basically how you live your life, how you make it work, essentially. And it's it's so refreshing to hear you talk about how well your family has supported you through this transition. And, you know, it's not like there's a I'm assuming there was no how to guide, you know, for them, it's sort of.
Judge David Tatel: [00:32:14] No, there's no.
Henry Bair: [00:32:15] Trial and On air, and.
Judge David Tatel: [00:32:16] You can't go to the store and buy a book of how to go blind or how to help someone go blind. It just takes support and mostly a lot of love. And now my grandchildren do it. You know, they're just like my kids. They're. They naturally take my hand if I don't have my. If Vixen isn't with me. Even the little ones. If we're at the beach, the little ones, even the little ones will say, hey, Papa. The waves are really big today. You know, they just. It's it's in the DNA of the family.
Tyler Johnson: [00:32:46] Again, I have zero desire, as you articulated earlier, to romanticize or sentimentalize anything. At the same time, I do think there is something beautiful about your family organically developing the sort of habit and and learned ability to be your eyes outside of your body, right? To sort of translate the visual aspect of images for you to connect to and appreciate.
Judge David Tatel: [00:33:09] That's well put. I agree with you about that. Yeah.
Henry Bair: [00:33:12] So we've been talking about the many ways that you've learned to accept and how your family has adapted to the blindness. But of course, as you write, and as you referred to earlier, for a very long time throughout your professional career, you did not accept or embrace this part of your identity. Right, right. I mean, you explicitly write, there's one point early on in your career when you were offered a government position to lead the Office of Civil Rights during the Carter administration. And then later on, when you were appointed a federal judge in the D.C. circuit, in both of those times, you strongly preferred that your blindness was not a part of the announcement right by the press.
Judge David Tatel: [00:33:57] That's exactly right.
Henry Bair: [00:33:57] And, you know, you also write about how much you regret that decision. Can you elaborate on that a little bit more? What were you thinking at the time? What were you worried about at the time? And how would you have done things differently if you were to go back?
Judge David Tatel: [00:34:10] I wanted to be evaluated on the merits. I didn't want people to think I got the job at the office for Civil Rights because I had a visual disability. I wanted people to think they picked the best civil rights lawyer they could find. And then when President Clinton appointed me to the D.C. circuit, same thing. I was thrilled to finally be a federal judge. I mean, it was the peak of a of a career for me, but I didn't want to be the blind judge. And again, this is one of these things that I've thought more deeply about while writing the book than I ever had before. I think two things. One, I understand why I did what I did. As I said, I think it's only natural. Just as when I was a little kid, when I was 15 years old and was hiding my sight because I wanted to be like my friends and I wanted to be, you know, viewed just like them as a good baseball player. When I was appointed to these jobs, I wanted to be viewed as a good civil rights lawyer and a good judge and not a blind one. But as I look back on it now, I do regret that. But you know, that regret has come from thinking about the book and writing it, because I think that had I been more public about it, both at OCR and especially at the D.C. circuit, my role could have been more inspirational to people like me than it otherwise was.
Judge David Tatel: [00:35:42] And in fact, that's why I wrote the book. I didn't really have any plans to write a book, but my friends persuaded me that this story could be inspirational, and maybe it was because I was of my regrets about not being more honest about this. When I was OCR director on the court. That led me to conclude, well, okay, now I can write a book and be honest about it, and maybe the book will provide the inspiration that I failed to provide before And in a way, that's what I'm happiest about the book now because I had not expected this. But I get 2 or 3 emails a day now from people I don't know who have read the book, who say things like, you've told my story. And so even for me, after all these years, when I was 15, 16, 17 years old and hiding my declining light, I thought I was the only one. I didn't have anybody to talk to about it. But it turns out that lots of people did this. Lots of people who have RP did exactly what I did. And so I hope maybe my book will say to people who are just beginning to go through this, hey, look, you're not the only one. Lots of us did that. It's perfectly human and it's okay to talk about it. So I feel really good about having written the book now.
Tyler Johnson: [00:37:01] So again, recognizing that this question may be overly simplistic, I feel like I can imagine What it would be like, at least temporarily, to function without, say, my sense of smell. Or maybe, though it would be devastating even without my sense of hearing. But I have to say that I feel qualitatively incapable of imagining what it would be like to function without sight. And that leaves me wondering, as your sense of sight receded. Were there other aspects of the world that did not require that same kind of visual discrimination, which you began to appreciate more things, maybe that you appreciated with your other senses, where the sense of them sort of swelled to fill the vacuum that was left as your sense of sight receded.
Judge David Tatel: [00:37:57] I think it's a hard question to answer, but I do think that, you know, the brain is unbelievably elastic. And I know that, for example, I don't have any doubt that my memory got better as my sight got worse because I had to retain stuff, I couldn't look back. I mean, by the time I was in my early, late, late 30s, early 40s, I could write a 30 40 minute speech and deliver it by memory. By the way, I can't do that anymore because I now rely on technology. So I think I think the brain accommodates. I don't think my hearing is necessarily better than other people, but I do think it's more attuned to sound because I'm so dependent on sound. And I know many times I hear things that other people don't hear. I don't think it's because it's better, it's just that it's functioning. It's more finely tuned, more aware of sounds. And one of the questions one of my former law clerks asked me while I was writing the book is she said, well, does not being able to see affect how you think? And again, you know, I can't compare what I do to anybody else because I'm only me. But I oddly enough, I think visually I see what I'm hearing. It's visual for me. And I have, you know, tricks I use to imagine what things look like. The brain is really a remarkable device. And whatever way I think my brain, anybody who loses one sense, I think the body accommodates it in other ways that I don't pretend to understand, but I think I've experienced personally.
Henry Bair: [00:39:36] Thanks for sharing that. There's definitely a part of the book where you talk about how when you read or use Braille or listen to sentences, you parse it out visually in your mind. Yes. I find it to be really fascinating. And it's like you. Yeah, you really do think of and process information differently.
Judge David Tatel: [00:39:57] Yeah. But is that different from the way you process information? Yeah. I think maybe the only reason it's different is that you could just glance at the page whenever you need to. You don't need to create an image of the page in your brain, whereas I need to do that because I can't look back at it. And so those images are visual and structural. They're like memory tricks.
Tyler Johnson: [00:40:17] And just to be clear, when you open your eyelids in the morning. Now do you see anything? What is it like? Nothing. So it is entirely dark. No, it's not black.
Judge David Tatel: [00:40:30] It's not black. It's fog. I always described it to people. It's like looking through Saran wrap or a frosted window. It's not dark when I shut my eyes. It doesn't look any different than when my eyes are open.
Tyler Johnson: [00:40:44] So you can't even see vague figures moving across your field of vision. It's just the same cloudy landscape all the time.
Judge David Tatel: [00:40:51] Yeah. No, no. I get no movement of sight at all. You know, sometimes I think it's brighter out. But I think what I'm experiencing is the warmth of the sun. I don't think I'm actually experiencing light. I think.
Henry Bair: [00:41:05] Well, thank you for opening up about that. And again, it's something again, as someone who I regularly interact with, people who are visually impaired, I don't hear about these experiences. Perhaps I should ask more about it in reflection. But thank you very much for sharing.
Judge David Tatel: [00:41:19] Yeah, I wrote a whole book about it.
Henry Bair: [00:41:21] Yeah. As you've mentioned, the process of writing the book was a very reflective one for you. I do have a question that's pretty reflective. One of the passages in the book that really shows your life's mission is in the context you're talking about, the Supreme Court landmark case, Gideon vs Wainwright, which guarantees a right to lawyers in criminal cases. You then write, were I in charge of the world, I'd extend Gideon to civil matters, guaranteeing lawyers for poor people facing eviction, victimized by predatory lenders, or sued for failing to make car or medical payments, just to name a few. You then talk about how there is an institution capable of ensuring that every poor person who needs a lawyer gets one. The legal profession itself, unlike people who run airlines, deliver packages, make smartphones, or operate any other commercial business. Lawyers must not measure their success merely by how well they serve those able to pay their bills as officers of the court. Lawyers have a broader responsibility to ensure that the courts work for everyone. That is an extremely mission driven, very optimistic view of the legal profession. There are a lot for whatever stereotypes people have for lawyers. I think that is a very admirably mission driven view. Do you think, in reflection, your blindness has impacted your dedication to this perspective over the course of your career?
Judge David Tatel: [00:42:59] I actually don't think so. My views about this, about the legal profession, about its role, about its obligations, about civil rights were all formed in the 60s and early 70s when I was largely sighted. The language, like what you read came from that experience, and it came from, you know, from having read the book, how important role models were to me in my life. And my role models were lawyers who believed in what you just read. Lots of lawyers believe that lawyers have a special responsibility, because they're officers of the court, to make the legal system work for everyone. And those were my role models. And I think my dedication to these kinds of ideals, I mean, frankly, I think it goes all the way back to my parents. My parents were, you know, for the sake of a better word, liberals who cared about society being successful and worried about Discrimination and victims. And I got a lot of that at the dinner table. And then, of course, in the 60s, and I actually don't think that any of this was influenced by my declining site, but how? I can't be sure of that. I mean, I don't know how anybody could really know for sure, but I'm just saying that I think you've asked a really, really good question, and I love the fact that you picked up the Gideon line in all the interviews I've done. You're the first person to do that, and I think that's one of the most important paragraphs in the book, so I appreciate that, but I don't think it comes from my own disability. Now, is it influenced a bit by it? Probably, but I can't articulate what it is. Mhm.
Henry Bair: [00:44:45] Now that we've discussed your view on the legal profession, and given that you dedicate a bit of your book to this, I feel I have to ask you about your thoughts on the current state of the country we live in a time when regardless of where you lie on the political spectrum, it's often repeated that democracy seems more at jeopardy now than ever before. What do you think? What most worries you about the future?
Judge David Tatel: [00:45:12] Okay, well, I'm not a historian, so when you say ever before, I'm not confident enough about my own knowledge of history to say it's worse than it's ever before. 1968 was a pretty terrible year in our country. Is it worse today than it was then? I actually think it is. I think the threats, the threats to democracy come from many different places. Um, the very structure of our government, the Electoral College, the Senate, the filibuster, the Partizan, gerrymandering, a whole series of structural problems in our constitutional system are are threatening to democracy. And the one I focus on in my book is the Supreme Court, and my concern that this court has abandoned the principles of judicial restraint that are so critical to preserving the separation of powers. And in the process, it's accumulated vast amounts of power at the expense of the political branches of government. When you combine that with all the other forces that are working in our country, plus the sharp divisions in the country now, yes, I think it is a time to worry about the future of our democracy.
Henry Bair: [00:46:27] Well, we appreciate your perspectives on that. I would like to close with something that you close your book with, which is how you met Vixen. Right. Okay. You talk about how you love talking about her. So let's talk about her. First of all, how did you meet her? And what was it like getting a guide dog so late in your life relative to how long you had been blind?
Judge David Tatel: [00:46:53] Well, now I wish I had done it earlier. I was 77 when I got the guide dog at Dixon, and as I say in the book, it was. Learning to use a guide dog was one of the hardest things I've ever done. It's you have to completely change the way you move around. You have to throw out all your rules you have about mobility and turn yourself over to a dog. And it was scary, but it was worth it because she's given me and Eddie, both of us, so much independence that we never had before. I, you know, we we love to walk together. We went on a big walk today together. But, you know, I can go by myself now. So we both have independence that we didn't have before. Both here in the country and when we were in Washington. And I'm, I go back and forth to the office with Dixon on the metro. The subway, we call it. The title of the chapter is The Dog That Changed My Life. And that that's actually not an overstatement. In fact, as I think about it, the dog has actually played a major role in my acceptance and willingness to talk about blindness in ways I never would have before.
Judge David Tatel: [00:48:03] If you had asked me to have this podcast five years ago, there's no way I would have done it. I wouldn't have talked about these things, but there have been lots of factors. And one of them is is Vixen. Because if you have a cane, which I had for many years, you're obviously a blind person, but people don't come up to you and say, oh, how does your cane work? You know? Whereas when you have a dog, people want to talk about your dog. They want to know, how does that how does this work? Where did you get her? Who trained her? Can she really cross streets with you? And so you can't hide from blindness if you have a guide dog. And the years I've had Vixen and had those conversations had made me so much more comfortable in talking about it. So Vixen herself, she's given me physical independence. But also, I think, you know, you might say emotional independence and freeing me to talk more about it. And I had no idea about that when I started down this route. You know, it's just a fascinating experience for Eddie and me.
Henry Bair: [00:49:06] In that case, we also thank Vixen for allowing you to be so open with your story. There is actually one last question I want to ask you as you think back on your life, particularly moments when you felt you had to suppress your identity as a blind person, what are some pieces of advice you would tell your younger self?
Judge David Tatel: [00:49:27] You know, I think, I think for the kid, the, you know, the 15, 18, 19 year old David Tatel, I wouldn't say to him, oh, go tell all your friends you have a visual disability. As I got older, though, the older David Tatel, I would say the one in law school and the one starting practice in law, I would say, you know, you'd be much better off if you just told everybody about this. You know, just like when I got the cane, the cane freed me in many ways because I didn't have to hide it anymore. And people, when I bumped into someone with a cane, nobody thought that was odd. All the awkwardness of trying to hide it was gone once I had the cane. Well, I think maybe, you know, in law school and practicing law, if I just told people like in law school, when I couldn't see the couldn't see the blackboard, I'd go to a friend afterwards and make up some excuse for why I needed his notes. I probably just should have said, hey, I you know, I can't see the blackboard. Can I borrow your notes? You know, when I was walking along in law school or wherever at night with a friend, instead of using my tricks, I probably should have just taken his arm, and said, hey, I can't see. That's the advice I would have given him then, but I, I don't, you know, the the 15 year old kid is much more complicated. Sure. I think probably even then, uh, would I have been a better baseball player if I had told my friends, don't hit the ball to this side of the field? I don't know. That's too long ago. I don't know the answer to that question.
Henry Bair: [00:51:18] Well, I mean, in any case, you know, we're so thankful that you would take the time, Judge Tatel, for coming on the show, for sharing your story, for writing this book. It is inspiring both, I think, to people who themselves may be dealing with vision impairment. It is inspiring to people who are hoping to support friends and family with visual impairment. And then from my perspective, it helps, certainly helps me as as a clinician to better understand the perspectives of people who are dealing with these issues. So yeah, I'm sure this episode and conversation will be very valuable to all of our listeners.
Judge David Tatel: [00:51:54] Well, I hope so. Thank you for reading the book and for inviting me on the program.
Henry Bair: [00:52:02] Thank you for joining our conversation on this week's episode of The Doctor's Art. You can find program notes and transcripts of all episodes at the Doctor's Art.com. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Tyler Johnson: [00:52:21] We also encourage you to share the podcast with any friends or colleagues who you think might enjoy the program. And if you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in healthcare who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments.
Henry Bair: [00:52:35] I'm Henry Bair.
Tyler Johnson: [00:52:36] And I'm Tyler Johnson. We hope you can join us next time. Until then, be well.
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Judge David Tatel is the author of the memoir Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice (2024).
