Noah Feldman, Columnist

The Senate Will Be Fine Without the Filibuster

Its constitutional structure already provides protection for political minorities, so the 60-vote custom isn’t essential.

August 23, 2019 at 12:30 PM UTC

By Noah Feldman

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Structurally sound.
Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

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Democrats are talking seriously about ending the legislative filibuster once and for all, effectively changing the number of Senate votes required to pass a bill from 60 to 51. The result would be a transformation in the way the U.S. Senate has operated for well over a century and a half.

This may seem like a terrible idea, robbing the Senate of its traditional role as a moderating influence on legislative enthusiasms. Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell seems to think so, writing Thursday in the New York Times that Democrats would “regret it a lot sooner than they think.”