Court Opinion

ID: 9456045
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:40:40.663293+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:50.021302
License: Public Domain

ALDISERT, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I agree that this circuit should adopt the Broyles rule, but I do not believe its application should threaten previous determinations by local boards in the three states and the territory of this circuit. I do not read United States v. Broyles, 423 F.2d 1299 (4 Cir. 1970) or United States v. Haughton, 413 F.2d 736 (9 Cir. 1969) to be bottomed on constitutional grounds. Instead, these decisions appear to be based on the salutary desire to supply the district court with a proper record of the administrative proceedings in their review of whether the registrant has met the statutory criteria. Because of the effect such a rule would have on the administration of justice, Stovall v. Denno, 388 U.S. 293, 87 S.Ct. 1967, 18 *1139L.Ed.2d 1199 (1966), I would remand to the district court all appropriate cases heretofore processed for further remand to the local boards to afford the boards the opportunity of explaining rejections of requests for reopenings in these cases. For cases arising hereafter, I would accept the majority’s procedure whereby the legality of the induction order is tested solely by the facts presented in the registrant’s selective service file.
I am also in agreement with the majority’s action which, in my view, restricts severely, if not completely overrules, our previous decision in United States v. Kroll, 400 F.2d 923 (3 Cir. 1968) on the theory that 32 C.F.R. § 1625.1, which purports to impose a requirement of notifying one’s local board “within 10 days after” a change in circumstances occurs, may be considered, at least as applied to conscientious objector cases, “another unwarranted delinquency regulation.”
My major disagreement with the majority is the adoption by this court of the minority rule of the circuits — the Second and Tenth — that the crystallization of one’s conscientious objector belief is always beyond one’s control. The Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Ninth Circuits have held that it is a circumstance over which he has control. To resolve this conflict the Supreme Court has accepted certiorari, 397 U.S. 1074, 90 S.Ct. 1525, 25 L.Ed.2d 808, in Ehlert v. United States, 422 F.2d 332 (9 Cir. 1970).1 And my specific quarrel with the majority action is their promulgation of a sweeping rule deciding the question of control over circumstances in all applications for reopening of classification.
In adopting this new rule for the circuit, the majority states:
This question, of course, is one upon which psychologists and philosophers may differ. Nevertheless, it is our duty to supply an answer which the local boards can apply. At the risk of being simplistic, we think that we must again deal with the ordinary usage of the words in the regulation. By common definition beliefs of conscience are always beyond one’s control.
I do not choose to enter the lists to decide whether it is the function of the judiciary, or that of Congress or the Executive to supply answers “which the local boards can apply.” But I cannot bring myself to concur in an approach which, while recognizing the complexity and sophistication of a behavioral science problem, nonetheless, formulates a conclusion, under the aegis of “common definition,” without discussing the specifics of a problem which has perplexed so many courts, and led to divergent conclusions.2
As a starting point, it has been suggested that if the acquisition of the conscientious objector belief resulted from deliberate action, then it must follow that the crystallization resulted from cir*1140cumstances within the registrant’s control. William James described deliberate action as that which results when the mind has many objects before it, related to each other in antagonistic or favorable ways, creating a feeling of inward unrest known as indecision. He suggested that as long as this process lasts, with the various considerations competing for attention, we are said to deliberate. When the original suggestion either prevails and causes the movement to take place, or becomes definitely quashed by its antagonists, we are said to decide in favor of one or another course, and the reinforcing or inhibiting objects which have competed for attention are termed the reasons or motives by which the decision is brought about.3 All deliberations, according to James, do not involve the same methodologies or cerebral intensities, but do have the common characteristic of a constant conflict of arguments for and against a given course.4
John Dewey and Bertrand Russell both emphasized the use of the deliberative process in making decisions. Dewey said that “[w]hile a man lives, he never is called upon to judge whether he shall act, but simply how he shall act. A decision not to act is a decision to act in a certain way; it is never a judgment not to act, unqualifiedly. It is a judgment to do something else — to wait, for example.” 5 And Russell has asserted: “[F]ew beliefs, if any, are wholly spontaneous in an educated man. The more a man has organized this knowledge, the more his beliefs will be interdependent, and the more will obvious truths be reinforced by their connection with other obvious truths.” 6
But to test the crystallization of conscientious objector beliefs by the presence of deliberate thought-action is not enough. Considering the evidence — the various objects competing for attention —is a deliberate, rational, intellectual activity. As an activity, it is within one’s control, and this fact is reflected in numerous phrases in ordinary language, as when we say that someone willfully refused to look at the facts. Once one has decided to consider the evidence, however, it is not clear that reaching a conclusion is to the same extent an activity within one’s control. We speak of “being forced to conclude,” or “being compelled by the facts” to a certain conclusion. One may be driven by the evidence or led against one’s will to a conclusion. If we are rational, and honest, then we let the evidence decide for us and do not control the conclusion we will reach.
Putting aside the deliberative process in its classical sense, and turning to the broader concept of “belief”, we find that formidable authorities have posed the questions: Can one really make oneself believe something, or make oneself go on believing it, just by an effort of will? Are our beliefs really under voluntary control at all ? 7
David Hume thought it quite obvious that they are not.8 H. H. Price seemed to agree, at least to the extent of saying:
Believing a proposition is, I think, a disposition and not an occurrence or “mental act”, though the disposition is not necessarily a very long-lived one and may last only a few seconds. * * There is a characteristic sort of mental occurrence which we sometimes notice when we are in the process of acquiring such a disposition. I am going to call this occurrence “assenting” to the proposition. * * * When our belief is a reasonable one, this assent*1141ing, and especially the initial assent, has a preferential character. * * *
Now because of this preferential element in it, assent may look like voluntary choice. But the appearance is deceptive. It is not a free choice at all, but a forced one. If you are in a reasonable frame of mind * * * you cannot help preferring the proposition which your evidence favours, the evidence you are at the moment attending to, though the evidence which other people have may of course be different. * * * It just is not in your power to avoid assenting to the proposition which the evidence [your evidence] favours, or to assent instead to some other proposition when the evidence [your evidence] is manifestly unfavourable to it.9
I have limited this analysis thus far to decision-making processes which involve the weighing of evidence, pro and con, in varying degrees of personal control. Not all decisions, however, are reached by an evidence-weighing procedure.10
Professor James included as “movement consequent upon cerebromental change” expressions of emotions and instinctive and impulsive performances. “An emotion,” he said, “is a tendency to feel, an instinct is a tendency to act, characteristically, when in the presence of a certain object in the environment.” 11 Instinct to him was “the faculty of acting in such a way as to produce certain ends without foresight of the ends, and without previous education in the performance,” and he declared that every instinct is an impulse. Bertrand Russell believed it possible for there to be a spontaneous belief. C. J. Adcock suggests that it is sometimes difficult to decide whether behavior based on emotionality results because “the immediate drive strength is overvalued and so difficult to control. The same result will obtain if the control function itself is too weak. It is very important to notice that while low ego control and high emotionality have similar effects they are *1142functionally very different.”12 And no discussion of a comparison between reason and uncontrolled action would be considered complete without a reference to Freud’s analysis: “The ego represents what may be called reason and common sense, in contrast to the id, which contains the passions.” 13
Based on the views heretofore rehearsed, I am convinced that the acquisition or maturation of conscientious objector beliefs may arise from circumstances beyond one’s control: when one reaches the decision by a rational process of weighing countervailing arguments in a purely objective fashion, to the end that he is compelled to a conclusion, such decision is not controlled by his will but is determined by the evidence; when one engages in an apparently rational process of evaluating the evidence but, in fact, “prefers” certain evidence favorable to an “acquired disposition,” the development of a belief is, at least in part, not controlled by will; when the acquisition of belief results from emotion, instinct, or impulse, it cannot be characterized as voluntary.
On the other side, there can be little doubt that a belief may come about through the exercise of one’s will and thus arise from circumstances within one’s control. If one enters upon an objective process of weighing and evaluating conflicting views, scrupulously avoiding the assigning of preferential regard for certain evidence, but in the end opts for a belief without being “driven” by the evidence, or in spite of the evidence, certainly this belief cannot be characterized as involuntarily acquired.
And at the risk of being accused of undue cynicism, I must confess my own subjective inclination to examine carefully all tardy expressions of conscientious objector belief. When the public expression of this formulation first takes place after receipt of the notice of induction, I am not willing to affix to such an occurrence, as would the majority, the irrebuttable presumption that it has happened on the road to Damascus.
Accordingly, I would abjure the promulgation of a hard-and-fast rule on the “control” issue for the governance of all cases of this kind. I would hold that the crystallization of conscientious objector beliefs may be within the control or beyond the control of the registrant, depending upon the specific circumstances of his case. Each case, then, should be evaluated on its own facts.

. A minority of circuits hold that the crystallization of such views is a circumstance over which the registrant has no control. United States v. Sandbank, 403 F.2d 38 (2 Cir. 1968), cert. denied 394 U.S. 961, 89 S.Ct. 1301, 22 L.Ed.2d 562 (1969); United States v. Gearey, 368 F.2d 144 (2 Cir. 1966), cert. denied 389 U.S. 959, 88 S.Ct. 335, 19 L.Ed.2d 368 (1967), rehearing denied 389 U.S. 1010, 88 S.Ct. 561, 19 L.Ed.2d 611 (1967); Keene v. United States, 266 F.2d 378 (10 Cir. 1959).
The majority of circuits hold that it is a circumstance over which lie has control. Ehlert v. United States, 422 F.2d 332 (9 Cir. 1970), cert. granted 397 U.S. 1074, 90 S.Ct. 1525, 25 L.Ed.2d 808 (1970); United States v. Schoebel, 201 F.2d 31 (7 Cir. 1963), with approving dicta in Davis v. United States, 374 F.2d 1 (5 Cir. 1967); United States v. Jennison, 402 F.2d 51 (6 Cir. 1968), cert. denied 394 U.S. 912, 89 S.Ct. 1024, 22 L.Ed.2d 225 (1969); United States v. Helm, 386 F.2d 434 (4 Cir. 1967), cert. denied, 390 U.S. 958, 88 S.Ct. 1045, 19 L.Ed.2d 1153 (1968); United States v. Al-Majied Muhammad, 364 F.2d 223 (4 Cir. 1966).

. In adopting the Second Circuit’s rule today we were not bound by a previous rule of decision as faced Judge Friendly in Paszel v. Laird, 426 F.2d 1169 (2 Cir. 1970), wherein he said that this subject “long the subject of debate between psychologist and philosophers, is now the law of this circuit.”

. William James, Psychology (Briefer Course), Collier Books, 1969 Edition, 426.

. Id. at 427-31. For a categorization of the chief types of decisions, see id. at 376-81.

. Pragmatic Philosophy, Anchor Books Edition (1966), 232.

. Id. at 313.

. H. H. Price, “Belief and Will,” Proceedings of the Aristolian Society, Yol. XXVIII (1954), 14, 15.

. Hume, Treatise, Everyman Edition, Vol. 2, 313-14.

. Price, supra, note 6, at 15, 16.

. Professor Karl H. Llewellyn began his classic, THE COMMON LAW TRADITION, Deciding Appeals, with these words:
When the psychologists began to look into how people go about reaching decisions, the question they were concerned with was: how do people get to a decision at all, to any decision, when faced with a problem-situation out of life? Roughly, they arrive at the conclusion that if it was a true problem-situation, i. e., if it was really a puzzler, then it was seldom that the actual deciding was done by way of formal and accurate deduction in the manner of formal logic. The common process was rather one either of sudden intuition — a leap to some result that eased the tension; or else it was one of successive mental experiments as imagination developed and passed in review various possibilities until one or more turned up which had appeal. In any ordinary case a reasoned justification for the result represented a subsequent job, testing the decision against experience and against acceptability, buttressing it and making it persuasive to self and others.

. He conceded that there may be purely cerebral emotion, i. e., the so-called subtler emotions:
Such feelings as moral satisfactions, thankfulness, curiosity, relief at getting a problem solved, may be of this sort. But the thinness and paleness of these feelings, when unmixed with bodily effects, is in very striking contrast to the coarser emotions. In all sentimental and impressionable people the bodily effects mix in: the voice breaks and the eyes moisten when the moral truth is felt, etc. Wherever there is anything like rapture, however intellectual its ground, we find these secondary processes ensue. Unless we actually laugh at the neatness of the demonstration or witticism; unless we thrill at the case of justice, or tingle at the act of magnanimity, our state of mind can hardly be called emotional at all. It is in fact a mere intellectual perception of how certain things are to be called — need, right, witty, generous, and the like. Such a judicial state of mind as this is to be classed among cognitive rather than among emotional acts.
James, supra, note 2, at 392.

. Adcock, Fundamentals of Psychology, Penguin Books (1968), 212-13.

. Freud, The Ego and the Id, Norton (1962 Ed.) 15.