School: Eugene Volokh on the Slippery Slope

Eugene Volokh of "The Volokh Conspiracy" fame came to Levin yesterday and delivered a talk on the mechanisms of the slippery slope. It largely covered the same ground as this paper published some years ago, but it was fun nonetheless. He discussed the various ways that the allegory of the slippery slope might operate - from the typical "small change" explanation ("boiling the frog" is another way of putting it) to other, more political explanations.

From the point of view of gun rights, it's interesting to note that Volokh suggested a blanket prohibition on gun bans might actually make gun registration more likely, or at least more palatable for some people. A favorable Supreme Court result in Heller, for example, would mean that people sitting on the fence about the issue (probably no one reading this blog) wouldn't listen to slippery slope arguments, since there's a limit to how far down the slope one could fall.

Volokh is a pretty animated speaker - as one of my friends put it, he's almost like a cartoon (but in a good way). He does tend to be more libertarian than most legal scholars, which of course makes him the darling of the Internetz. But you can tell that he never mocks the views of liberals or conservatives even when he doesn't agree - my kind of guy.