SNAC Announcment
Greetings:
Monday October 25, Professor Eugene Volokh of the UCLA Law
School will present at the Saturday Night Anarchy Club 7:15 to 9:00
"Mechanisms of the Slippery Slope"
http://www1.law.ucla.edu/~volokh/slipperyshorter.pdf
Abstract appears below
(Note that that the talk is on Monday so the club will
temporarily be named Monday Night Anarchy Club until Satruday November
13 when Spencer MacCallum speaks):
7:15 - 7:30: Reception and socializing (light
refreshments provided)
7:30 - 9:00: Seminar presentation and formal
discussion
9:00 - 10:00: -- open interaction --
10:00 pm: The meeting is over.
SNAC is held six times per year and entails a forty-five minute
academic presentation plus a forty-five minute discussion.
As always, refreshments and socializing!
Details:
For more information, go to the SNAC website:
http://www.sjsu.edu/stringham/snac/
If you prefer not to be emailed about upcoming talks simply
reply to this email. We hope to see you at our events.
Directions to Vista Del Lago Clubhouse in Santa Clara:
Directions from the Peninsula traveling on 280 South: Exit
Saratoga Avenue in Santa Clara (not the Saratoga exit in Sunnyvale!).
At top of exit ramp, take a left onto Saratoga. Go through a few
lights and take a left onto Stevens Creek Blvd. Then a quick, first
right onto Buckingham (not a traffic light). Continue down Buckingham
about 500 yards (past Keystone) to the end of the street. Vista Del
Lago is on the right. Park on Buckingham or one of the other nearby
streets (you might have to go over to Mauricia). The Clubhouse is in
the interior of the complex. Look for the Directory or ask someone
where the Clubhouse is.
Directions from downtown San Jose traveling on 280 North: Exit
Saratoga Avenue in Santa Clara (not the Saratoga exit in Sunnyvale!).
At top of exit ramp, take a right onto Saratoga. Go through a few
lights and take a left onto Stevens Creek Blvd. Then a quick, first
right onto Buckingham (not a traffic light). Continue down Buckingham
about 500 yards (past Keystone) to the end of the street. Vista Del
Lago is on the right. Park on Buckingham or one of the other nearby
streets (you might have to go over to Mauricia). The Clubhouse is in
the interior of the complex. Look for the Directory or ask someone
where the Clubhouse is.
Directions from Santa Clara University: Take Market Street away
from the University (west). Market turns into Saratoga Ave. Continue
across San Tomas. The next light is Keystone, take a right onto
Keystone. Go to the end and take a right onto Buckingham. Go 100-200
yards, Vista Del Lago is on the right. Park on Buckingham or one of
the other nearby streets (you might have to go over to Mauricia).
The Clubhouse is in the interior of the complex. Look for the
Directory or ask someone where the Clubhouse is.
"Mechanisms of the Slippery Slope"
ABSTRACT:
We've all made plenty of slippery slope arguments in our day, and
we've all pooh-poohed plenty. Do these arguments make sense,
and, if so, when?
This article tries to go behind the metaphor of the slippery slope to
the mechanisms by which one step today may make the next step
more likely tomorrow. "Slippery slopes," I argue, can operate through
several distinct mechanisms, which need to be discussed separately.
And these mechanisms, it turns out, relate to rational ignorance,
heuristics, path-dependence, the expressive effect of law, and
multi-peaked preferences -- important subjects that have received
extensive attention recently, but that have not so far been linked to
the slippery slope question.
I suggest that slippery slopes may indeed sometimes happen (though
they aren't logically inevitable). The flip response that "if
we can draw a line today, we'll be able to draw the line tomorrow" is
correct only if decisionmakers have firm and single-peaked
preferences, and unbounded rationality. In the real world, where
these conditions don't always hold, one decision can indeed help
grease the slope to another, in various ways.
And this can happen not just with judicial decisions -- where they
relate in complex ways to the system of precedent -- but also
with legislative ones, where precedent is not supposed to play a
formal
role. Understanding the full range of slippery slope mechanisms can
help us evaluate the risk of slippage, craft better arguments related
to this
risk, and perhaps minimize this risk.
http://www1.law.ucla.edu/~volokh/slippery.pdf; for a
somewhat abridged version, see
http://www1.law.ucla.edu/~volokh/slipperyshorter.pdf
Eugene Volokh teaches free speech law, copyright law, the
law of government and religion, and a seminar on firearms regulation
policy at UCLA Law School.