Court Opinion

ID: 9454713
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:56:06.261539+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:15.831904
License: Public Domain

BLACKMUN, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I am not convinced that this registrant is not justly to be suspected of abusing the registration process. His “on again, off again” matriculation record; his lack of cooperation in supplying his Local Board with information pertinent for his appropriate classi*335fication; and his last minute assertion of conscientious objector status, which he himself characterizes as “very much a last minute decision, and as such its sincerity is suspect”, a claim presented, apparently, when all else failed him, afford grounds for such suspicion.
Nevertheless, because on the facts we seem to have a mandatory reopening situation here, and because Bundle thus has a technical defense which a more conscientious registrant would not' bother with, I am constrained to concur in the result. Rundle will then be able to present whatever case he may feel he possesses and the process will begin all over again, with a conclusion not known at this time.
Until we have some definitive authority to that effect, I do not join Judge Lay in his apparent observation that because a student originally matriculates in one September his fourth and final “academic year,” ordinarily expected to end in the fourth spring after the original September matriculation, nevertheless must necessarily extend to another September. I would have thought that the normal spring graduation was a conclusion, or a beginning of something new, and that that is what “Commencement” is all about. I suspect many young men, who graduate on one day and who then, soon, are on their way to basic training, would be surprised to discover that their academic year persists. It is interesting to note that a district judge’s opinion, which Judge Lay quotes at length in his second footnote, pinpoints a June graduation as the end of the fourth academic year.