Greg Sargent: Joe Manchin just said we’ve had the filibuster “for 232 years,” and that this has made us exceptional. So let’s start with that.
Jack Rakove: Senator Manchin should know his history much better than he seems to. The history of the filibuster is a bit complicated. Most historians think its dominant moment really came in the 20th century, and its principal use was to protect the interests of Southern state segregationists against national legislation that would upset the fabric of white supremacy.
Sargent: That Manchin claim is a crude version of something you often hear from filibuster defenders: That it makes the Senate more functional, in keeping with the intentions of the founders for it to act as a deliberative check on impulsive legislation.
In your work, you trace James Madison’s arguments about the makeup of the Senate and find that claim to be pretty unsupportable.
Rakove: Madison certainly did want the Senate to act as a check on impulsive legislation. But he also wanted it to be a body that would reach decisions. The devices to protect the Senate would be to make it smaller to encourage serious deliberation, to have it elected on a different cycle than the House, and to give it certain additional powers that would turn senators into genuine statesmen.
Sargent: That doesn’t necessarily support the idea that he would have favored a supermajority requirement in order to act as that deliberative check.
Rakove: Madison was consistently a majoritarian. You needed supermajorities on particular issues — on treaties, on veto overrides, impeachment verdicts and constitutional amendments. But definitely not for ordinary legislation.
When this issue was debated at the constitutional convention, Madison went to some lengths to explain why, as much as he believed that the rights of minorities had to be respected, he didn’t want them to be able to block majoritarian decisions that had been properly debated.
Sargent: You underscore that point by often dwelling in your work on the fact that during debates over the Constitution, Madison argued against small states having equivalent representation in the Senate to large ones, and that he thought proportional representation would be more just.
Madison also envisioned a Senate that works well. As you write, Madison did envision the Senate as a check on reckless legislating, having experienced dysfunctional state legislatures. But you have debunked the idea that this meant he would have favored “obstruction” as the means to accomplish that, and instead saw quality legislators as the answer.