More on constitutional law and slippery slope arguments

I posted earlier http://porcupinehuddle.blogspot.com/2012/03/behaviorial-economist-and-tendentious.html on Prof. Thaler’s point dismissing slippery slope arguments, and brought up the story of successive changes in the recipe for cookies.  A recent post on Commentary http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/04/04/liberal-libel-of-the-court/#more-790183 includes this quote from Justice Antonin Scalia:

“If you … read a brief filed in a constitutional law case, you will rarely find the discussion addressed to the text of the constitutional provision that is at issue, or to the question of what was the originally understood or even the originally intended meaning of that text. The starting point of the analysis will be Supreme Court cases, and the new issue will presumptively be decided according to the logic that those cases expressed, with no regard for how far that logic, thus extended, has distanced us from the original text and understanding.” [my emphasis]