Will Wilkinson attempts one:
Were we to make slavish deference to precedent universal law, ala Kant, we'd end up with what a sort of path-dependent judicial drift–tiny but unavoidable interpretative mutations piling up until the law ends up in places no one finds desirable. Interpretative frameworks that push the law toward substantive ideals save us somewhat from the problem of arbitrary, path-dependent drift. But they create another kind of arbitrary drift, as rival frameworks push the interpretation of the laws in incompatible directions. This can, again, leave us in stupid places no one ever had in mind. The only rescue is the occasional "activist" saltative leap that either ignores or radically reinterprets precedent in order to restore to the law the coherence of principle, for a while at least.
The Dish 