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Home – Founding Fathers & American History – The Filibuster: An Accident Turned Into Tradition

The Filibuster: An Accident Turned Into Tradition

The filibuster is unconstitutional.

Our Founding Fathers spoke against requiring a supermajority threshold to pass regular measures in Congress, yet the erroneous practice continues today via the filibuster. Current Senate practice reaches beyond our Founders’ original plan that a supermajority vote was only to be used for the five instances listed in the Constitution and two instances listed within the Amendments, according to CRS. Those who advocate for the filibuster are invoking the symbolism of protecting “history” when all they are actually protecting is an unconstitutional tradition.

The Constitution specifies a very limited number of times when a supermajority vote is necessary: amending the Constitution, overriding vetoes, convicting impeached officials, ratifying treaties, and expelling Members of Congress. The 14th and 25th Amendments also allow for a supermajority vote to remove individuals deemed unfit to serve from office.

The filibuster is nowhere listed in the Constitution, and the supermajority vote to overcome it was an accidental creation. That’s right, the biggest impediment to delivering on the mandate handed to the House, Senate, and White House by the American people is an accident that we have turned into tradition.

In 1805, Vice President Aaron Burr advised the Senate to get rid of the “previous question” motion that allowed a simple majority to end debate. After the Senate followed Burr’s advice, Senators inadvertently left themselves without a means to end debate through only a simple majority vote (half plus one). The groundwork was then laid for the first recognized filibuster to occur in 1837, almost 50 years after........

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