Filibustering in the U.S. Senate
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Filibustering in the U.S. Senate By Lauren C. Bell

Chapter 1:  Introduction
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acknowledged the complexities involved with compiling a list of filibusters for his book Filibustering in the Senate, writing:

insurmountable difficulties confront an attempt to compile a complete and unchallengeable list of instances in which the Senate of the United States has been subjected to the tactics of delay. With motives hidden in the give and take of parliamentary battle, who can say whether a prolonged speech is a concealed design for obstruction or a sincere effort to impart information, whether garrulousness is more cunning than it seems? Undoubtedly, there will be filibusters which will forever go unrecognized.

Although Burdette's (1940) list of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century filibusters has been widely used by previous scholars (Binder and Smith 1997; Sinclair 2000, 2002; Mayhew 2003; Wawro and Schickler 2006, chapter 5), those who utilized his data have recognized its limitations. As Wawro and Schickler (2006, 111) noted: “[Burdette's] coverage was not meant to be exhaustive, and most likely includes only particularly notable filibusters. Burdette never specifies the criteria he used for the selection of his cases, and it is difficult to tell with any precision from his descriptions how broad the support or opposition was.” Beth (1994), who compiled the most comprehensive list of late twentieth-century filibusters, is equally cautious in his claims.

Despite the time-bound nature of Beth's list—actually a 1994 Congressional Research Service Memorandum entitled “Filibusters Identifiable in the U.S. Senate, 1789–1993”—it remains among the more significant contributions to the literature on the United States Senate in the last decade. “Beth's list,” as it has come to be known among researchers who study the filibuster, has contributed to such works as Binder and Smith's 1997 Politics or Principle?: Filibustering in the United States Senate (Brookings Institution Press), Wawro and Schickler's 2006 Filibuster: Obstruction and Lawmaking in the U.S. Senate (Princeton University Press), and Koger's Filibustering, as well as informed several journal articles that have advanced congressional scholars’ collective understanding of the filibuster in the Senate (cf. Overby and Bell 2004; Mayhew 2003; Binder, Lawrence, and Smith 2002). Drawing on Beth's