Filibuster
A filibuster is a political tactic primarily utilized in the U.S. Congress, where legislators extend debate on proposed legislation to delay or prevent a vote. This practice allows lawmakers to stall proceedings until voting deadlines pass, leading to the failure of certain bills. Filibusters can last as long as the speaker can remain standing and speaking, or until a majority votes to end the debate. The term "filibuster" has its roots in the Dutch and Spanish words for "pirate" or "freebooter," reflecting the idea of hijacking legislative discussions. Although the tactic has historical origins dating back to ancient Rome, it gained prominence in U.S. politics in the 19th century after the Senate removed the "previous question" motion, which allowed for the termination of debates with a simple majority. Filibusters have been used on various contentious issues, with notable instances of lengthy speeches in the 20th and 21st centuries. Despite ongoing discussions about reforming or limiting the filibuster, it remains a significant aspect of how minority voices can influence legislative outcomes in the Senate. Supporters of the procedure argue it protects minority interests, while opponents contend it can lead to legislative gridlock.
Filibuster
A filibuster is an extended oral argument used by politicians to delay or prevent a legislature from voting on a proposed law. In so doing, politicians can deadlock their legislatures for so long that the voting deadlines expire and the bills fail. Filibusters generally last as long as the speakers can remain talking and standing, or until a majority of the legislature votes to stop all debate. It is a widely used practice in the United States Congress, where numerous controversial bills have been filibustered, with varying degrees of success, since the nineteenth century.
Origin and History of the Filibuster
While filibustering cannot be traced to one exact time or place, the earliest recorded filibuster in human history dates to 60 BCE, during the final years of the Roman Republic. That year, Cato the Younger, a staunchly moralistic member of the Roman Senate, became faced with an ethical question.
A group of contracted tax collectors working for the Roman treasury suddenly began losing money due to certain agreements they had made in their contracts. The collectors then petitioned the Senate to produce new contracts that would ultimately save them money. These individuals held great financial and political influence in Rome, and so most senators complied with their request. Cato, however, rejected the proposal outright.
He argued that contracts were legally binding and that the collectors would simply have to endure the deals they themselves had made. Even as his fellow senators opposed him, Cato did not yield. He began blocking the Senate's vote on the subject, eventually gridlocking the legislature for six months before the tax collectors relented. Cato prided himself on his obstruction, and, for the rest of his career, he continued filibustering the Senate where he felt appropriate.
An American Practice
The act of filibustering did not actually become known by this term until the early modern period, likely at some point in the eighteenth or nineteenth century. The word "filibuster" derives from two sources. The first is the Dutch word vribuiter, or "pirate," and the second is the Spanish word filibustero, meaning "freebooting." This is how the English word filibuster came to refer to the essential hijacking of a political debate. Over the next several centuries, filibustering became common in the parliaments of Western countries such as England and Australia, but it was in the United States that it was truly popularized.
Filibustering was not specifically mentioned in the original US Constitution. However, by 1789, each house of the US Congress, the House of Representatives and the Senate, claimed the power of a "previous question" motion. This allowed the houses to end all lengthy debate on a particular subject with a simple majority vote.
While the House of Representatives would retain its motion indefinitely, the Senate eliminated it from its protocol in the early 1800s due to the influence of Vice President Aaron Burr. In 1805, Burr counseled the Senate to remove redundant procedures from its rulebook. He identified the previous question motion as particularly worthy of deletion. In 1806, the Senate followed Burr's advice and terminated the motion. This meant that senators could now endlessly protest and block a vote on any bill that came before the Senate.
However, for several decades, US senators hesitated in using their new power of the filibuster. The first filibuster in the US Senate, related to the firing of Senate employees, began on March 5, 1841, and ended six days later (though the obstruction was recurring, not continuous). Additional filibusters lasting days or weeks appeared periodically in the Senate for the rest of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century.
However, in 1917, an angry President Woodrow Wilson forced the Senate to curtail its power to filibuster bills perpetually. The Senate had recently filibustered and defeated Wilson's proposal to arm American commercial ships against German submarines in World War I. In response, Wilson ordered the Senate to adopt cloture, a rule allowing filibusters to be defeated by a two-thirds majority vote. The Senate did so immediately.
Cloture did little to stop the influence of filibusters on Senate proceedings, and filibusters, in fact, became more frequent during the rest of the century. Senate rules required filibuster leaders to speak nearly constantly, being able to stop only briefly to take questions from colleagues. The speakers could not sit, eat, or leave the Senate floor. Breaching any of these rules would immediately terminate the senator's right to speak and thus end the filibuster.
Modern Filibusters
In the mid to late twentieth century, numerous senators set records for the longest single-person filibusters in American history. In 1953, Wayne Morse of Oregon filibustered an oil bill for twenty-two hours and twenty-six minutes. Alfonse D'Amato of New York filibustered a military bill for twenty-three and a half hours in 1986. In 1957, however, South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond staged the longest filibuster in Senate history to that point when he blocked voting on that year's Civil Rights Act for twenty-four hours and eighteen minutes.
Filibusters continued to prevail in the US Senate into the twenty-first century. In 2013, Republican senator Rand Paul staged a filibuster for twelve hours and fifty-two minutes to delay a vote to confirm John Brennan as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Paul filibustered again in 2015, this time spending ten hours and thirty-one minutes denouncing the reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act. This law granted the National Security Agency the power to collect Americans' phone records for national security purposes. Parts of the act were ultimately reauthorized. In 2017 and 2018, Senator Mitch McConnell led the Republicans in using the Constitutional option to block Democrats from filibustering President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court justice nominees.
While sixty of the chamber's one hundred members are required to pass most legislation, some efforts to change this guideline and limit the power of filibusters emerged in the 2020s, primarily by the Democratic Party. One proposed change was to require senators opposing a bill to stay on the Senate floor actually debating the issue, however, the Senate rejected this in early 2022. Similar proposals continued in the following years, but those who supported the Senate filibuster claimed it gave minority groups a voice.
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