Michael L. Goldstein v. J. William Middendorf’s Empirical Analysis
535 F.2d 1339 · 1976
Citation profile
11 federal appellate · 4 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 20 later decisions — most recently December 2013
11 federal appellate · 4 district ·
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Brewer v. United States · Braunfeld v. Gibbons · Committee for Public Education & Religious Liberty v. Nyquist · Cappaert v. United States · Sicurella v. United States
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 20 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]he ultimate question ... is the sincerity of the [applicant] in objecting, on religious grounds, to participation in war in any form. The Secretary’s denial of the application must be supported by a statement of reasons, and will be upheld on review if there is a ‘basis in fact’ for the decision. Although this standard of review is a narrow one, it is not toothless. ‘A basis in fact will not find support in mere disbelief or surmise as to the applicant’s motivation. Rather, the government must show some hard, reliable, provable facts which would provide a basis for disbelieving the applicant’s sincerity, or it must show something concrete in the record which substantially blurs the picture painted by the applicant.’ The reasons relied upon by the Secretary must be grounded in logic, and ‘a mere suspicion is an inadequate basis in fact.’”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“sincerely objects to participation of any kind in war in any form.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“so infected by ignorance of the law and/or prejudice against the appellant that [it] cast[s] substantial doubt upon all the ... officer[']s findings and conclusions”). On this petition, the Army has neither advanced Colonel Linn's comments as bases for the CORB’s decision nor disavowed them. 13 . The facts underlying the Witmer decision illustrate the point. There the Court upheld the CORB’s denial of Witmer’s application for CO status only after reviewing objective evidence on which the board based its decision. After noting that Witmer”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.