Pardon my stupidity - is there anything about filibusters in the constitution?

[rurallib]

Super majorities or the minority of a legislative body stopping the majority.
I know I do not want to abolish a minority's ability to affect the outcome, but what is going on now is ridiculous.

[kirby]

1. Kinda...

Article 1 gives the House and Senate the authority to set their own rules. The Senate added the filibuster to its rules in 1806.

[Zen Democrat]

5. And they've tinkered with the rules before, the last time in 1975

In 1975, the Senate reduced the number of votes required for cloture from 66 to 60 (or 2/3 to 3/5).

[FBaggins]

7. Yes but

Changing the rules can itself be filibustered.

[Davis_X_Machina]

2. The Constitution stipulates...

..that each House shall be the sole determiner of its own rules and procedures, and the filibuster -- actually a basket of rules on unanimous consent, unlimited debate, and cloture -- falls under that rubric. The Constitution is therefor blind to the filibuster, specifically, emphatically, in black and white.

The Supremes won't touch it, either.

[MineralMan]

3. Not directly. Just the right for the Senate to make its own rules.

[LooseWilly]

4. Google makes this easy.

http://www.google.com/search?q=constitution+filibuster

The first link on the list: http://www.usconstitution.net/constfaq_a7.html eventually produces the following:

Q139. "Why can't I find anything about filibusters in the Constitution?"

A. The short answer is because there is nothing there to find: the Constitution does not contemplate the filibuster in any way, directly or indirectly. So, then, what is all this talk about the Framers, the Senate, the filibuster, and its relationship to the Constitution?

<snip...>

So the Senate can change its own rules whenever it likes... which I believe was the "nuclear option" that the Republicans always threatened the Democrats with between 2000 & 2006.

[rurallib]

6. thank you all!

[Igel]

8. I've always liked filibusters.

I mean, I chaired meetings fairly frequently and always hated them, in practice, when there was something I wanted to see passed. And I cheered them when there was something I wanted to see fail.

But the entire process can work, as long as there's some sort of cost for the filibuster. Currently they're essentially free. Even a few of years ago they had a price: If you filibustered then the amount of input that even Blue Dogs had was diminished. Things are more partisan in the Senate than they were then, hard as it may be to believe. It's more like 1994 than 2004. Even then, though, filibusters could be had for cheap. They should be more expensive, more costly, require more effort. Not a truly huge effort, but a reasonable expense of energy and effort.

Sometimes the filibuster, or threat of filibuster, just allows for more information to be disseminated; contrary to the rules of order when there was a filibuster threatened and we had 3 hours worth of speakers I simply pretended to lose track of the meeting for 5 minutes or so--then the half of the committee that was in favor of a bill could individually talk to the half of the committee against it, and those 10 conversations would deal with 15 problems quickly. Then a gavel rap would restore order, and often the filibuster failed to materialize. This could never work in the Senate because there are too many people. Then again, it could work in my committee because it wasn't heavily politicized and grandstanding was a total waste of time.

The filibuster nicely keeps something--when there's a price--that the minority really doesn't want passed from being passed. Often it allows time for a compromise to be worked out, something acceptable to 60 senators, or for enough effort to be made to satisfy a supermajority that the majority loses no sleep in silencing the minority. Now, more often than not, the compromises have to be within a narrow range or risk being judged impure, so rather than find a compromise there's simple complaining when a pure bill fails.