parades of horribles

Noun

parade of horribles (plural parades of horribles)

1. A parade featuring a progression of people wearing comic and grotesque costumes, commonly accompanied by floats and models representing monsters.
2. (informal) Any rhetorical device presenting a series of terrible results that notionally might follow from an act, instead of confining the argument to the explicit terms of any applicable law.
   • The Chief Justice was adamant, if alone:
     'Nothing in the language or gloss previously placed on this provision of the Fifth Amendment remotely justifies the treatment which the Court today accords to the collateral-estoppel doctrine. Nothing in the purpose of the authors of the Constitution...1970, Philip B. Kurland, “Enter the Burger Court: The Constitutional Business of the Supreme Court”, in The Supreme Court Review, Vol. 1970, pages 48–49