Vision Quotes

“It’s taken me years to come around to the notion that there should be term limits for Supreme Court justices. The idea of staggered eighteen-year terms has been in circulation since at least 2004, and it was among the least intrusive reform proposals considered by a commission President Biden appointed shortly after he took office. Eighteen years on our”
― David S. Tatel, Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice

“The very next day, the Court issued an opinion allowing a website designer to discriminate against gay couples—the first time in American history that the Supreme Court has allowed a business open to the public to refuse to serve a disfavored group.”
― David S. Tatel, Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice

“In a series of rulings along partisan lines, the Roberts Court has eaten away at the separation between church and state, an idea so important to the Founders of our nation that they put it in the very first sentence of the Bill of Rights.”
― David S. Tatel, Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice

“glimmer of hope in 2023 when, in a case called Allen v. Milligan, the Court voted 5–4 to allow a Section 2 challenge to proceed against Alabama’s new congressional map, which diluted the voting power of Black citizens by “packing” most of them into a single district and distributing the rest across several others. It was a good decision, especially because it held in no uncertain terms that “discriminatory intent” is not a “requirement for liability” under Section 2. I was relieved that Section 2 had survived, at least in some form. But Milligan was a very easy case, and its effect will be limited to jurisdictions where voting is racially polarized. It’s too early to tell how many teeth Section 2 truly has left and whether they’ll survive for long. Moreover, civil rights advocates”
― David S. Tatel, Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice

“rejected as discriminatory took effect just two hours after the Supreme Court issued its decision in Shelby County, affecting hundreds of thousands of eligible voters. Other states previously subject to preclearance redrew district lines, tightened voter-ID requirements, purged voter rolls, canceled same-day registration, restricted early voting, and closed polling places—all in ways that made voting more difficult for minority voters”
― David S. Tatel, Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice

“Ginsburg wrote many memorable dissents during her time on the Court, but no line of hers has stuck with me like her response to the Court’s view about the continuing necessity of Section 5. “Throwing out preclearance” because “it has worked,” she warned, “is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” Exactly so.”
― David S. Tatel, Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice

“The framers of the Fifteenth Amendment recognized that it’s one thing for the Constitution to prohibit racial discrimination in voting but quite another to make sure that states actually let people of color into the voting booth. So the Fifteenth Amendment also provided that “Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
― David S. Tatel, Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice

“The core of the Fifteenth Amendment is a simple promise: that all men shall have the right to vote, regardless of the color of their skin.”
― David S. Tatel, Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice

“How can we, as a society, insist that people resolve their disputes with each other and with their own government through the legal process, yet deny the poor access to the very system we insist they use? The rule of law cannot long live if it works only for the wealthy.”
― David S. Tatel, Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice

“As gatekeeper to the legal system, the profession itself has an obligation to ensure that those gates are open not just to those who can afford to pay attorney fees, but to everyone entitled to the law’s protection.”
― David S. Tatel, Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice

“Shriver saw civil legal assistance as a means to an end: the end of poverty. Running OEO, he said, gave him “a new appreciation of the contribution legal services can make not simply to get poor people out of a specific jam but to get poor people out of poverty once and for all.”
― David S. Tatel, Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice

“More advice to young lawyers: Attach yourself to an organization whose mission you care about and where you can find mentors and role models. They will inspire you, give meaning to your career, and help you down the road in ways you can’t possibly anticipate.”
― David S. Tatel, Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice