:''This article refers to the political act of filibuster. For other uses see
Filibuster (disambiguation).
As a form of
obstructionism in a
legislature or other decision making body, a 'filibuster' is an attempt to extend debate upon a proposal in order to delay or completely prevent a vote on its passage.
The term first came into use in the
United States Senate, where Senate rules permit a senator, or a series of senators, to speak for as long as they wish and on any topic they choose, unless a
supermajority group of 60% of senators brings debate to a close by invoking
cloture. In the
United Kingdom Parliament, a bill defeated by this maneuver is said to have been "talked out".
The term 'filibuster' was first used in 1851. It was derived from the
Spanish ''filibustero'' for 'pirate' or 'freebooter'. This term had evolved from the
French word ''flibustier'', which itself evolved from the
Dutch ''vrijbuiter'' (
freebooter). This term was applied at the time to American adventurers, mostly from Southern states, who sought to overthrow the governments of Central American states, and was transferred to the users of the filibuster, seen as a tactic for pirating or hijacking debate.
[1]
United States
Procedural filibuster
In current practice, Senate Rule 22 permits filibusters, in which actual continuous floor speeches are not required, although the Senate Majority Leader may require an actual traditional filibuster if he or she so chooses. This threat of a filibuster can therefore be as powerful as an actual filibuster. Previously the filibustering senator(s) could delay voting only by making an endless speech. Currently they need only indicate that they are filibustering, thereby preventing the senate from moving on to other business until the motion is withdrawn or enough votes are gathered for cloture.
Preparations
Preparations for a filibuster can be very elaborate. Sometimes cots are brought into the hallways or cloakrooms for senators to sleep on. According to Newsweek, "They used to call it 'taking to the diaper,' a phrase that referred to the preparation undertaken by a prudent senator before an extended filibuster. Strom Thurmond visited a steam room before his filibuster in order to dehydrate himself so he could drink without urinating. An aide stood by in the cloakroom with a pail in case of emergency."
[2]
Filibusters have become much more common in recent decades. Twice as many filibusters took place in the 1991-1992 legislative session as in the entire nineteenth century.
[3]
History
Early use
In 1789, the first U.S. Senate adopted rules allowing the Senate "to move the previous question," ending debate and proceeding to a vote. In 1806,
Aaron Burr argued that the motion regarding the previous question was redundant, had only been exercised once in the preceding four years,
[4] and should be eliminated. The Senate agreed, and thus the ''potentiality'' for a filibuster sprang into being. Because the Senate created no alternative mechanism for terminating debate, the filibuster became an option for delay and blocking of floor votes.
The filibuster remained a solely theoretical option until 1841, when the Democratic minority tried to block a bank bill favored by the Whig majority by using this political tactic. Senator
Henry Clay, a promoter of the bill, threatened to change Senate rules to allow the majority to close debate. Missouri Senator
Thomas Hart Benton rebuked Clay for trying to stifle the Senate's right to unlimited debate and he was unsuccessful in eliminating the filibuster with a simple majority vote.
The 20th century and the emergence of cloture
In 1917 a rule allowing for the cloture of debate (ending a filibuster) was adopted by the Democratic Senate
[5] at the urging of President
Woodrow Wilson.
[6] From 1917 to 1949, the requirement for cloture was two-thirds of those voting.
In 1946 Southern Democrats blocked a vote on a bill proposed by Democrat
Dennis Chavez of New Mexico (S. 101) that would have created a permanent Fair Employment Practices Committee (
FEPC) to prevent discrimination in the work place. The filibuster lasted weeks, and Senator Chavez was forced to remove the bill from consideration after a failed cloture vote even though he had enough votes to pass the bill. As civil rights loomed on the Senate agenda, this rule was revised in 1949 to allow cloture on any measure or motion by two-thirds of the entire Senate membership; in 1959 the threshold was restored to two-thirds of those voting. After a series of filibusters led by Southern Democrats in the 1960s over
civil rights legislation, the Democrat-controlled Senate
in 1975 revised its cloture rule so that three-fifths of the Senators sworn (usually 60 senators) could limit debate. Changes to Senate rules still require two-thirds of Senators voting. Despite this rule, the filibuster or the threat of a filibuster remains an important tactic that allows a minority to affect legislation.
Strom Thurmond (D/R-SC) set a record in 1957 by filibustering the
Civil Rights Act of 1957 for 24 hours and 18 minutes, although the bill ultimately passed. Thurmond broke the previous record of 22 hours and 26 minutes set by
Wayne Morse (I-OR) in 1953 protesting the Tidelands Oil legislation.
The filibuster has tremendously increased in frequency of use since the 1960s. In the 1960s, no Senate term had more than seven filibusters. In the first decade of the 21st century, no Senate term had fewer than 49 filibusters. The 1999-2002 Senate terms both had 58 filibusters.
[1]
Current practice
Filibusters do not occur in
legislative bodies in which time for debate is strictly limited by procedural rules. The House did not adopt rules restricting debate until 1842, and the filibuster was used in that body before that time.
In current practice,
Senate Rule 22 permits procedural filibusters, in which actual continuous floor speeches are not required, although the
Senate Majority Leader may require an actual traditional filibuster if he or she so chooses. This threat of a filibuster can be just as powerful as an actual filibuster.
Budget bills are governed under special rules called "
reconciliation" which do not allow filibusters. Reconciliation once only applied to bills that would reduce the budget deficit, but since 1996 it has been used for all matters related to budget issues.
A filibuster can be defeated by the governing party if they leave the debated issue on the
agenda indefinitely, without adding anything else to the agenda.
Strom Thurmond's attempt to filibuster the Civil Rights Act was defeated when Senate Majority Leader
Lyndon Johnson refused to refer any further business to the Senate, which required the filibuster to be kept up indefinitely. Instead, the opponents were all given a chance to speak and the matter eventually was forced to a vote.
According to a Historical Moments Essay on the U.S. Senate website, the Republican Party was the first to initiate a filibuster against a judicial nominee in 1968, forcing Democratic president
Lyndon Johnson to withdraw the nomination of Associate Supreme Court Justice
Abe Fortas to be chief justice.
The filibuster today
In 2005, a group of
Republican senators led by
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-
TN), responding to the
Democrats' threat to filibuster some judicial nominees of
President George W. Bush to prevent a vote on the nominations, floated the idea of eliminating filibusters on judicial nominees by declaring current Senate rules allowing such filibusters unconstitutional. Senator
Trent Lott, the junior Republican senator from
Mississippi, named the plan the "
nuclear option." Republican leaders later referred to the plan as the "constitutional option," though opponents and some supporters of the plan continue to use "nuclear option."
On
May 23,
14 senators — seven Democrats and seven Republicans — led by
John McCain (R-
AZ) and
Ben Nelson (D-
NE) brokered a deal to allow three of Bush's nominees a vote on the Senate floor while leaving two others subject to a filibuster. The seven Democrats promised not to filibuster Bush's nominees except under "extraordinary circumstances," while the seven Republicans promised to oppose the nuclear option unless they thought a nominee was being filibustered that wasn't under "extraordinary circumstances." Specifically, the Democrats promised to stop the filibuster on
Priscilla Owen,
Janice Rogers Brown and
William H. Pryor, Jr., who had all been filibustered in the Senate before. In return, the Republicans would stop the effort to ban the filibuster for judicial nominees. "Extraordinary circumstances" was not defined in advance. The term was open for interpretation by each Senator, but the Republicans and Democrats would have had to agree on what it meant if any nominee were to be blocked. Senator
John Kerry led a failed filibuster against Judge (now Justice)
Alito in January 2006, calling Alito's nomination an "extraordinary circumstance."
This agreement expired at the end of the second session of the
109th United States Congress (ended
January 3,
2007).
Senate Democratic leadership allowed a filibuster on July 17, 2007 on debate about a variety of amendments to the 2008 defense authorization bill
H.R. 1585, the Defense Authorization bill, specifically the Levin-Reed amendment
S.AMDT.2087 to H.R.1585. The filibuster had been threatened by Republican leadership to prompt a
cloture vote.
Canada
Bill 103 - The Megacity Bill
A unique form of filibuster was pioneered by the
Ontario New Democratic Party in the
Legislative Assembly of Ontario in April 1997. To protest
Progressive Conservative government legislation that would
amalgamate the city of
Toronto, Ontario, the small New Democratic caucus introduced 11,500
amendments to the megacity bill, created on computers with
mail merge functionality. Each amendment would name a street in the proposed city, and provide that public hearings be held into the megacity with residents of the street invited to participate. The
Ontario Liberal Party also joined the filibuster with a smaller series of amendments; a typical Liberal amendment would give a historical designation to a named street. The NDP then added another series of over 700 amendments, each proposing a different date for the bill to come into force.
The filibuster began on
April 2 with the Abbeywood Trail amendment and occupied the legislature day and night, the members alternating in shifts. On
April 4, exhausted and often sleepy government members inadvertently let one of the NDP amendments pass, and the handful of residents of Cafon Court in
Etobicoke were granted the right to a public consultation on the bill (the government subsequently nullified this with an amendment of their own). On
April 6, with the alphabetical list of streets barely into the Es,
Speaker Chris Stockwell ruled that there was no need for the 230 words identical in each amendment to be read aloud each time, only the street name. With a vote still needed on each amendment, Zorra Street was not reached until
April 8. The NDP amendments were then voted down one by one, eventually using a similar abbreviated process, and the filibuster finally ended on
April 11.
★ External link:
archive of the amendment debates in the Provincial
Hansard. The filibuster extends from section L176B of the archive to L176AE; the Cafon Court slip-up is in section L176H, Stockwell rules on the issue of repetition in L176N, and Zorra Street is reached in L176S.
See
Common Sense Revolution for more information.
UK Parliament
Procedural rules in the
British House of Commons do not allow Members to speak on just any subject; they must stick to the topic of the debate.
In 1874,
Joseph Gillis Biggar started with making long speeches in the British House of Commons to delay passage of Irish coercion acts.
Charles Stewart Parnell, a young nationalist MP, who in 1880 became leader of the party, joined him in this tactic to generally obstruct the business of the House to force the Liberals and Conservatives to negotiate with Irish nationalist MPs. The tactic was enormously successful and Parnell succeeded in, for a time, forcing Parliament to take the "Irish question" seriously.
In 1983,
Member of Parliament (MP)
John Golding talked for over 11 hours during an all-night sitting at the committee stage of the
British Telecommunications Bill. However, as this was at a standing committee and not in the Commons chamber, he was also able to take breaks to eat. The all-time Commons record for non-stop speaking is six hours, set by
Henry Brougham in 1828.
The 20th-Century record for the longest non-stop Commons speech is held by
Conservative barrister Sir
Ivan Lawrence. The then MP for
Burton spoke for four hours 23 minutes during the Fluoridation Bill's committee stage on
March 6,
1985.
The 21st-Century record was set on
December 2 2005 by
Andrew Dismore,
Labour MP for
Hendon. Dismore spoke for three hours 17 minutes to block a Conservative Private Member's Bill, the Criminal Law (Amendment) (Protection of Property) Bill, which he claimed amounted to "vigilante law".
[7] Although Dismore is credited with speaking for 197 minutes, he regularly accepted interventions from other MPs who wished to comment on points made in his speech. Taking multiple interventions artificially inflates the duration of a speech, and is seen by many as a tactic to prolong a speech.
Filibustering can have consequences that were not expected or intended. In January 2000, filibustering orchestrated by
Conservative Members of Parliament to oppose the Disqualifications Bill led to cancellation of the day's parliamentary business on
Prime Minister Tony Blair's 1000th day in office. However, since this business included
Prime Minister's Question Time, Conservative Leader
William Hague was deprived of the opportunity of a high-profile confrontation with the Prime Minister.
On Friday, 20th April 2007, a
Private Member's Bill aimed at exempting Members of Parliament from the Freedom of Information Act was 'talked out' by a collection of MPs, led by Liberal Democrats
Simon Hughes and Norman Baker who debated for 5 hours, therefore running out of time for the parliamentary day and 'sending the bill to the bottom of the stack'. However, since there were no other Private Member's Bills to debate, it was resurrected the following Monday.
[8]
Filibusters in other legislatures on the British model
The
Northern Ireland House of Commons saw a notable filibuster in 1936 when
Tommy Henderson (Independent Unionist MP for Shankill) spoke for nine and a half hours (ending just before 4 AM) on the Appropriation Bill. As this Bill applied government spending to all departments, almost any topic was relevant to the debate, and Henderson used the opportunity to list all his many criticisms of the Unionist government.
In the
Southern Rhodesia House of Assembly, the Independent member Dr
Ahrn Palley staged a similar all-night filibuster against the Law and Order Maintenance Bill in 1960.
France
In France, in August 2006, the left-wing opposition submitted 137,449 amendments to the proposed law bringing the share in
Gaz de France owned by the French state from 80% to 34%, to allow for the merger between Gaz de France and Suez. Normal parliamentary procedure would require 10 years to vote on all the amendments.
The French constitution gives the government two options to defeat such a filibuster. The first one is through the use of the article 49 paragraph 3 procedure, according to which the law is adopted except if a majority is reached on a non-confidence motion. The second one is the article 44 paragraph 3 through which the government can force a global vote on all amendments it did not approve or submit itself.
In the end, the government did not have to use either of those procedures. As the parliamentary debate started, the left-wing opposition chose to withdraw all the amendments to allow for the vote to proceed. The "filibuster" was aborted because the opposition to the privatisation of Gaz de France appeared to lack support amongst the general population. It also appeared that this privatisation law could be used by the left-wing in the upcoming presidential election of 2007 as a political argument. Indeed,
Nicolas Sarkozy, president of the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP - the right wing ruling party), Interior Minister, former Finance Minister and candidate to the presidency, had previously promised that the share owned by the French government in Gaz de France would never go below 70%.
Fictional representations of filibusters
★ The 1939 film ''
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington'' climaxes with a young Junior Senator Jefferson Smith (played by
Jimmy Stewart), astonished to discover the corruption of his mentor, staging a filibuster to prevent his expulsion from the chamber long enough to expose the corruption.
★ In the ''
King of the Hill'' episode ''
Flush with Power'', a drought brings forth
ordinance 631-A, a law which makes "lo-flo" toilets mandatory (which in reality waste more water than high-capacity toilets).
Hank joins the Heimlich County Board of Zoning and Resources in an attempt to repeal the ordinance, but his actions earn the chagrin of Nate Hashaway, fellow board member and owner of Hashaway Fixtures (the manufacturer of the toilets). At the time of the vote on his repeal of the ordinance, everyone but Hank votes
nay. About to give up, Hank takes the advice of
Peggy. He begins reciting musings written by Peggy, which is immediately apparent to Nate Hashaway as a filibuster, forcing other board members to use the lo-flo toilets and see first-hand how useless they are.
See also
★
Obstructionism
★
Nuclear option
References
Notes
1. Online Etymology Dictionary - "filibuster", retrieved February 14, 2007
2. Newsweek - "Filibuster: Not Like It Used to Be", retrieved February 14, 2006
3. Lazare, D. ''Frozen Republic'', p.198
4. see M. Gold & D. Gupta, 28 Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 205 at 215
5. United States Senate - "Party Division in the Senate, 1789-Present", retrieved February 14, 2007
6. United States Senate - "Filibuster and Cloture", retrieved February 14, 2007
7. BBC News - "MP's marathon speech sinks bill", retrieved February 14, 2007
8. BBC News
Media
★ BBC, "
Filibustering," at
BBC News, 16 July 2005.
★ BBC, "
MP's marathon speech sinks bill" at BBC News, 2 Dec. 2005.
★ Sarah A. Binder and Sterven S. Smith, ''Politics or Principle: Filibustering in the United States Senate''. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1996. ISBN 0-8157-0952-8
★ Eleanor Clift, "
Filibuster: Not Like It Used to Be," ''Newsweek'', 24 Nov. 2003.
★ Bill Dauster, "
It’s Not Mr. Smith Goes to Washington: The Senate Filibuster Ain’t What it Used To Be," ''The Washington Monthly'', Nov. 1996, at 34-36.
★ Alan S. Frumin, "Cloture Procedure," in ''
Riddick's Senate Procedure,'' 282–334. Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Office, 1992.
★ Garry Gamber, "
Famous Filibusters in Our Political History"
★ Daniel Lazare, ''The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy''. Harcourt, 1996. ISBN 0-15-100085-9
★ Jessica Reaves, "
The Filibuster Formula," ''Time'', 25 Feb. 2003.
★ U.S. Senate, "
Filibuster and Cloture."
★ U.S. Senate, "
Filibuster Derails Supreme Court Appointment."
العربية
中国
Français
Deutsch
Ελληνική
हिन्दी
Italiano
日本語
Português
Русский
Español
