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

spent considering an item of pending business. Indeed, this is a problem with many previous studies of Senate filibusters—without identifying the individuals who engaged in the dilatory procedures, it is impossible to discover anything of those senators’ intents, which (as noted earlier) is a vital part of determining whether a senator is filibustering.

Therefore, for as much as we think we know about the filibuster, efforts to fully understand the procedure and its effects on public policy have been hampered by a lack of available data. The sole study that has endeavored to compile a comprehensive—or at least defensible—list of filibusters since Beth's 1994 work treats threatened filibusters, cloture motions, and a range of dilatory behavior as equivalent to filibustering (see Koger 2010). Previous studies and popular press accounts likewise have had a tendency to conflate various delaying tactics. Thus, it is difficult to ascertain how many filibusters have actually taken place in recent years or who led those that did occur.

In light of the past decade and a half of highly partisan and polarized Senate politics, the need for a complete and well-founded list that can be compared with other extant lists of Senate filibusters is apparent. Without such a list, a number of significant questions pertaining to the Senate cannot be fully studied. Such questions include the power of Senate leaders vis-à-vis rank and file senators, the extent to which party and ideology matters in a chamber of relative equals, and the ways in which individual members use the rules and norms of the Senate to advance their personal and policy goals. The recognition of filibusters through identifying their leaders thus allows researchers not only to know with greater precision that a filibuster has, in fact, occurred, but also permits the study of additional substantive research questions related to the Senate filibuster.

Toward a More Definitive Record
of Senate Filibusters

Identifying the shortcomings of extant lists of filibusters is relatively simple, but correcting them is not. As the discussion earlier in this chapter made clear, filibusters exist because of the lack of rules prohibiting them. Thus,