Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice

Please join Justice Leondra Kruger in conversation with Justice David Tatel about his new book, Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice.

Lunch will be provided. 

For questions and accommodation requests, please contact Jenny Boyden (jboyden@law.berkeley.edu or 510-664-4959).

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Appointed by President Bill Clinton, Judge David Tatel served on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1994 to 2024, succeeding future Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

After graduating from the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago Law School, he served as the founding director of the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and then director of the National Lawyers Committee. He headed the Office for Civil Rights of the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare during the Carter administration and then founded and led the education practice at Hogan Lovells, where he is now Senior Counsel. Judge Tatel is a member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In the past, he co-chaired the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Science, Technology, and Law, and chaired the boards of The Spencer Foundation and The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Judge Tatel and his wife, Edie, live in Virginia and Washington, D.C. They have four children, eight grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.

Judge Tatel’s memoir, Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice, was published on June 11, 2024 by Little Brown. It recently received the Gould Book Award by Touro Law Center.

Justice Leondra Kruger is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of California. She took office in January 2015 and was retained by voters in November 2018. Before joining the court, Kruger worked in the United States Department Justice as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel, as an Assistant to the Solicitor General, and as an Acting Deputy Solicitor General. During her time in the Department of Justice, Kruger twice received the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service and argued twelve cases on behalf of the United States in the United States Supreme Court. Kruger had previously worked in private practice, where she specialized in appellate and Supreme Court litigation, and taught as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Chicago Law School.

Kruger received an A.B. from Harvard College and a J.D. from Yale Law School, where she was an Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Law Journal. Following graduation, she served as a law clerk to Judge David S. Tatel of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and to Justice John Paul Stevens of the United States Supreme Court.

Kruger was elected to The American Law Institute in 2016. She is a member of the Appellate Advisory Committee of the Judicial Council of California, the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules of the Judicial Conference of the United States, and the Board of Directors of the John Paul Stevens Foundation.