[This month, I'm serializing my 2003 Harvard Law Review article, The Mechanisms of the Slippery Slope.]
An intermediate position A might also be untenable if it is burdensome to administer. One obvious burden might be the effort required to make and review decisions under a nuanced, fact-intensive rule: for instance, the Supreme Court came within one vote of slipping—for better or worse—down the slope to eliminating the obscenity exception, partly because of the perceived difficulties of administering the obscenity test. Another burden may be the risk of error in applying a complex rule, especially when the rule needs to be applied by many lower courts or executive officials.
