The Volokh Conspiracy

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Slippery Slope Arguments

Slippery Slope Arguments in History: The Supreme Court in the Flag Salute Case

|The Volokh Conspiracy |


slippery
Camel (A) sticks his nose under the tent (B), which collapses, driving the thin end of the wedge (C) to cause monkey to open floodgates (D), letting water flow down the slippery slope (E) to irrigate acorn (F) which grows into oak (G). [Illustration by Eric Kim, from my idea.]

From Justice Jackson's majority opinion in W. Va. State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette (1943):

As first and moderate methods to attain unity have failed, those bent on its accomplishment must resort to an ever-increasing severity…. Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters…. [T]he First Amendment to our Constitution was designed to avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.

Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, and the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. Naturally, his posts here (like the opinions of the other bloggers) are his own, and not endorsed by any institution.