I'm not sure I agree. Many legal doctrines, especially procedural doctrines (like jurisdiction), are justified based on knock-on effects. But that is different than recursive analysis.
Or, to use LW terminology, meta != decision-theoretic reasoning.
I don't think we're talking about the same thing. I was simply making the point that many people don't understand the difference between procedural issues and substantive ones.
Some legal background:
One would think that disagreement between Circuits about the meaning of a law would be legally relevant evidence about whether the law was ambiguous. Instead, there appears to be a circuit split on the meaning of circuit splits.
More available here, for the amusement of those on this site who like to think meta. Also a bit of a lesson on the limits of meta-style analysis in solving actual problems.