SPP
PROFESSOR JEREMY MAYER DISCUSSES THE FILIBUSTER ON
PBS
SPP Professor Jeremy
D. Mayer, a political scientist, was one of two guest
experts
who appeared May 16, 2005
on "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" to discuss the
Senate’s
attempt to filibuster over the president’s judicial
nominees.
SPP Professor Jeremy
D. Mayer |
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NewsHour
senior correspondent Gwen Ifill spoke to Mayer
and his colleague, Sarah Binder, a professor
at George Washington University, about the
history of the filibuster within the Senate,
and what it is intended to accomplish. Mayer
noted that the filibuster really came into
prominence during the Civil Rights era, during
which there was “a strong regional opposition
to a majority desire to stop things like lynching
in the South ... [and the filibuster gave]
minorities that impassioned chance to say, ‘No.
Nothing else happens until someone compromises
with us.’” And yet, he went on
to say, racial minorities have not historically
emerged as winners after a filibuster. “The
one great exception was sort of a filibuster
threat by Carol Moseley-Braun in 1993 when
they were about to grant recognition to the
Daughters of the Confederacy again, and she
threatened to filibuster and won,” Mayer
noted.
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He
also described an infamous moment during which Senator “Al
D'Amato filibuster[ed] over 750 jobs in upstate
New York; he went on for
15 hours
and ended up singing songs about Mexico.” Finally,
he commented on the tendency of both sides
in the debate to continue to return to the
topic of the Constitution. “The
Constitution is silent about the filibuster,” he
remarked. “This does not involve the
Constitution. The Senate is given the power
under the Constitution
to set up its own rules. So both sides in the
debate are wrong when they try to wrap themselves
in the
Constitution.”
To
read the full transcript and watch a video clip,
please click here.
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