Court Opinion

ID: 9641434
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:31:55.553651+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:37.583479
License: Public Domain

FRANK, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
This decision may be of small practical import to this petitioner for citizenship, since perhaps, on filing a new petition, he will promptly become a citizen. But the method used by my colleagues in disposing of this case may, as a precedent, have a very serious significance for many another future petitioner whose “good moral character” may be questioned (for any one of a variety of reasons which may be unrelated to a “mercy killing”) in circumstances where the necessity of filing a new petition may cause a long and injurious delay.1 Accordingly, I think it desirable to dissent.
The district judge found that Repouille was a person of “good moral character.” Presumably, in so finding, the judge attempted to employ that statutory standard in accordance with our decisions, i. e., as measured by conduct in conformity with “the generally accepted moral conventions at the time.” My colleagues, although their sources of information concerning the pertinent mores are not shown to be superior to those of the district judge, reject his finding. And they do so, too, while conceding that their own conclusion is uncertain, and (as they put it) “tentative.” I incline to think that the correct statutory test (the test Congress intended) is the attitude of our ethical leaders. That attitude would not be too difficult to learn; indeed, my colleagues indicate that they think such leaders would agree with the district judge. But the precedents in this circuit constrain us to be guided by contemporary public opinion about which, cloistered as judges are, we have but vague notions. (One recalls Gibbon’s remark that usually a person who talks of “the opinion of the world at large”' is really referring to “the few people with whom I happened to converse.”)
Seeking to apply a standard of this type, courts usually do not rely on evidence but utilize what is often called the doctrine of “judicial notice,” which, in matters of this sort, properly permits informal inquiries, by the judges2 However, for such a purpose (as in the discharge of many other judicial duties), the courts are inadequately staffed,3 so that sometimes “judicial notice” actually means judicial ignorance.
But the courts are not utterly helpless; such judicial impotence has its limits. Especially when an issue importantly affecting a man’s life is involved, it seems to me that we need not, and ought not, resort to our mere unchecked surmises, remaining wholly (to quote my colleagues’ words) “without means of verifying our conclusions.” Because court judgments are the most solemn kind of governmental acts — backed up as they are, if necessary, by the armed force of the government — they should, I think, have a more solid foundation. I see no good reason why a man’s rights should be jeopardized by judges’ needless lack of knowledge.
I think, therefore, that, in any case such as this, where we lack the means of determining present-day public reactions, we should remand to the district judge with *155these directions: The judge should give the petitioner and the government the opportunity to bring to the judge’s attention reliable information on the subject, which he may supplement in any appropriate way. All the data so obtained should be put of record. On the basis thereof, the judge should reconsider his decision and arrive at a conclusion. Then, if there is another appeal, we can avoid sheer guessing, which alone is now available to us, and can reach something like an informed judgment.4

 Of course, we cannot thus expect to attain, certainty, for certainty on such a subject as public opinion is unattainable.

 Consider, e.g., the case of a professional man, unable during a long delay, incident to bis becoming a citizen, to practice bis profession in certain states of this country.

 Cf. Wigmore, Evidence, 3d Ed., §§ 41, 2569, 2571, 2580, 2583; Thayer, A Preliminary Treatise On Evidence (1898) 308-309; Davis, An Approach to Problems of Evidence in The Administrative Process, 55 Harv.Law Rev. (1942) 364, 404-405, 410; Morris, Law and Fact, 55 Harv.Law Rev. (1942) 1303, 1318-1325.
In this very case, my colleagues have relied on informally procured information with reference to “the fate of a similar offender in Massachusetts.”

 Think how any competent administrative agency would act if faced with a problem like that before us here.
Cf. Frank, If Men Were Angels (1942) 122-127; L. Hand, J., in Parke-Davis & Co. v. H. K. Mulford Co., C.C., 189 F. 95, 115; Cohen, Benjamin Nathan Cardozo, 1 Nat.Lawyers Guild (1938) 283, 285; Morris, Law and Fact, 55 Harv. Law Rev. (1942) 1303, 1318-1319.