Come Support Fellow Bloggers!
Next Tuesday, February 17th, Eugene Volokh, of The Volokh Conspiracy, will be discussing slippery slope arguments. Come support fellow bloggers, so that, one day, people will want to listen to us!
Details:
Date: Tuesday, February 17
Room: Goldberg
Food? Hell yeah! Le Med will be catering.
Details:
Date: Tuesday, February 17
Room: Goldberg
Food? Hell yeah! Le Med will be catering.
posted by Slam Master A at 3:26 PM
18 Comments:
Is this the Federalist Society event or something else?
Who is Slam Master? do you even post here?
Yea this is the Federalist Society event
wow, i heard him give a talk on that topic at least five years ago. good talk though, will hopefully shut up a lot of slippery-slope BS we hear in lecture
Will those spiffy FedSoc ties be sold at the event?!
I like how an anon person questions whether someone posts here. Yes, he does (recent addition to the roster).
How is it determined who will be added to the roster? Is there a write-on process? Is the person hazed?
8:12, place a white napkin over black coffee in Zeb; drop it to the floor if the coffee is burnt; maintain your dry cleaning; a courier-provocateur will come to you at 18:40 on the second blind date.
Fuck. It's the second blind date. I knew I messed something up!
Damn Federalists... let's all go to the meeting and tell them how much we don't like them!
Aren't conservatives the ones who love the slippery slope argument? I.e. if you legalize consentual sodomy, next thing you know we'll be sanctioning pedophilia and bestiality; if you legalize abortion, next thing you know we'll be killing babies for sport, etc.
8:15, I think Federalists would tell you they are not traditional conservatives. Their argument against pro-choice rulings would probably be "Well, there's no right to privacy granted in the constitution, so if we're going to legalize, congress should do it." Or something. I'm no federalist. But yeah, I don't think they make social conservative arguments like those. (Few people with graduate educations do).
dan, I think you're too dismissive of 8:15's point. It's not quite to the point of threatening opening the gates for pedophilia and bestiality, but Scalia has repeatedly brought up polygamy in gay rights cases. That's fairly characterized as a slippery slope approach because he's essentially saying if we let gay people have rights look who else we'll have to recognize(and he has a graduate degree, believe it or not). See the Romer v. Evans dissent for a nice example.
and damn patrick, you're a federalist? that's oddly disappointing.
Well, not really a Federalist. But I dabble. To see how schizophrenic I am on this point, consider my response to these two question:
Structural issues in Çon Law? States' rights and separation of powers, all the way. That government is best which governs least.
Systematic social and political oppression? Thank god for Warren and the 14th Amendment -- they saved our country.
Re the substance of Laura's comment, I'm not sure I understand what's so ridiculous about Scalia's observations about polygamy. My political attitude toward gay marriage is pretty simple: who loves whom is none of the government's goddamn business. The power of the state (with limited exceptions, e.g., child abuse and the like) should stop at the bedroom door, and who goes in and out just isn't a a public affair. Maybe that's simplistic, but it's what I believe.
It's hard to see how my position (leave people alone) doesn't apply with equal force to polygamy. I'm uncomfortable with polygamy because it is historically associated with wretched, truly horrible
treatment of women. So I see a strong correlation between polygamy and a sort of social cancer that I believe the government should be squashing out.
Now, I'm sure there is a meaningful and principled way to distinguish polygamy from gay marriage, while maintaining my political beliefs about the government staying out of people's homes, but I don't think it's immediately clear. At least not to me. But then I don't have a graduate degree yet, either.
"Federalist" at Boalt means "not entirely sure every legal issue revolves around maintaining white male hegemonic power relations." It's a sliding scale here in Bizerkeley. Kind of like how I assume "liberal" at Regent means "is not entirely sure the Constitution establishes an ecclesiastical theocracy."
Dan said...
Their argument against pro-choice rulings would probably be "Well, there's no right to privacy granted in the constitution, so if we're going to legalize, congress should do it."
Oh sweet Jesus, Dan... not Congress! If anyone is going to regulate health and welfare, it's the States! (And I think we start from the presumption that it's legal, so if anyone is going to make it illegal, it's the States).
Patrick, Laura doesn't state that Scalia's arguments are ridiculous, but only that he relies on a slippery slope argument. Making the point nicely, I think, that slippery slope arguments aren't inherently liberal or conservative.
Oh. Um, yeah. Good point.
By the way, whoever taped this note on the stairs to the Donor Lobby is my new hero!
I dub the "Warrior of the Week."
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