Liberal Hypocrisy on Filibusters
Liberal Hypocrisy on Filibusters » Dispatches From the Culture Wars
Ed’s right here: if there’s a change to the filibuster rule, the Senate has to make it & this sure doesn’t help the group’s credibility.
I’ve written many times about how Republicans and Democrats often exchange scripts when it comes to the filibuster. When one party is in power in the Senate, the filibuster is a terribly evil idea that must be done away with; when that same party is in the minority, the filibuster is an absolutely essential tool to avoid majoritarian tyranny. Lather, rinse, repeat. But I’m pretty disappointed to see the liberal group Common Cause behaving the same way. They actually filed a lawsuit to get the filibuster declared unconstitutional, which was just (predictably) dismissed by a federal judge.
The judge, Emmet Sullivan of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said “reaching the merits of this case would require an invasion” into internal Senate processes and “would thus express a lack of respect for the Senate as a coordinate branch of government.”
“The court acknowledges at the outset that the Filibuster Rule is an important and controversial issue,” Sullivan wrote. In recent years, the judge continued, “even the mere threat of a filibuster is powerful enough to completely forestall legislative action. However, this court finds itself powerless to address this issue for two independent reasons.”
Sullivan said the plaintiffs, the government accountability group Common Cause, four members of the House of Representatives and three individuals, do not have legal standing to challenge the filibuster rule. The judge rejected the argument that vote nullification—the alleged injury among the House members—reaches the threshold for legal standing.
“Second, and no less important, the court is firmly convinced that to intrude into this area would offend the separation of powers on which the Constitution rests,” Sullivan said. “Nowhere does the Constitution contain express requirements regarding the proper length of, or method for, the Senate to debate proposed legislation.”