Princeton students participated in a 384 hour filibuster that ended in a 24 hour DC filibuster with Senators Lautenberg, Corzine and Schumer. The movement
spread to over 50 campuses across the country in 35 states and inspired over
100 citizen filibusters organized by MoveOn that were planned for Tuesday. Our
statement regarding the compromise agreement is below:
The Senate has agreed to preserve the filibuster. This is a victory for the students and citizens who worked so hard and spoke so eloquently in support of our democratic system of checks and balances. We congratulate all of them and we thank all of them. We also thank the many people who supported what became a national movement, a genuine expression of the electorate. Did they listen to us? It's hard to say. But no one can question that we were heard and we, students of all political persuasions, achieved our goal.
(more on the flip side....)
That having been said, it is a strange sort of victory, isn't it? If you believe that Senator Frist's nuclear option would have been illegal and unprecedented - as we do, along with many constitutional scholars and political analysts - then the Republican leadership should not have considered it in the first place. Is it a victory when the world is returned to what it should be? Do we celebrate normalcy?
This is what the Majority Leader proposed.
As Senate rules now stand, Senators are allowed to extend debate over any judicial nominee by conducting a filibuster. If they are to overcome the filibuster and call a vote on the nominees, the leadership must find 60 Senators to support the vote; this number is known as a supermajority. The Majority Leader's nuclear option would have abolished the filibuster for judicial nominees. Senator Frist has asserted that to change Senate rules in this manner he needs only a simple majority, 51 votes. This assertion directly contradicts Senate tradition, and the controversy over the rules change is not hard to understand. It strikes many Americans as strange that it would take only 51 votes to change a procedure that cannot itself be stopped by less than 60 votes. The filibuster has been used several times for judicial nominees in the past 50 years and also for legislative debate. It was altered in 1975 - but in accordance with Senate rules - when the required supermajority at the time, 67 Senators, voted to lower the number of Senators needed to stop a filibuster to 60. Senator Frist was unable to persuade nearly that number to support his "nuclear option." It is quite possible he would not have even have found his 51.
We are happy - indeed, relieved - that the rules of the Senate, that the nature of the Senate as a deliberative body, have been preserved. We thank Senators McCain, Chafee, Snowe, and Collins for their integrity in coming out against the nuclear option. We appreciate their having put their government above their party. We thank Senators McCain , Graham, Snowe, Collins, DeWine, Chafee, Warner, Leiberman, Landrieu, Nelson, Inouye, Pryor, Salazar, and Byrd for crafting the compromise that preserves our system of checks and balances.
We are not, however, ready to thank Senator Frist or his allies for their distasteful and ill-considered threats. They used the integrity of our system of governance as a bargaining chip to accomplish their short-term political gain. Because of their actions, the system of checks and balances has been tarnished. The federal bench may now have on it three judges who could not win the support of a mere 60 Senators. This is the moment when all of us as citizens must inform ourselves about the nominees and communicate our conclusions to our elected officials. This is the beginning, not the end, of this particular democratic process.
You will have heard many times in the last days that few judicial nominees have been successfully filibustered. The key word is "successfully." There have, in fact, been several judicial filibusters in the past half century. The filibusters were not ultimately successful because the judges had the qualifications necessary to persuade enough Senators to vote for cloture, to end the filibuster. They were able to win the consent of a supermajority. The judges that now stand to join the federal judiciary, what of them? Many Americans consider them extreme or unqualified; enough senators to sustain a filibuster saw them in the same light. If they garner approval, it will be nominal - not because of their merits. They will pass through the Senate only because the Senate had a greater concern - its own institutional integrity - and were ready to accept the lesser evil. These judges may sit on the bench for the rest of their lives, but they will have been allowed on it only because of the threat of the nuclear option. How large is the difference between acting illegally and using the threat of illegal action to achieve your ends? Certainly, there is a difference, but it is too small to comfort us entirely. We have not crossed that crucial threshold into illegality but we rammed up against it again and again for the last month, and it has been scarred. We shall not forget this shame.
What for the future? Minority Leader, Harry Reid, says "Of course, there will be filibusters in the future." We agree, and we are happy for it; there should be, there must be. The "Memorandum of Understanding on Judicial Nominations" lays out the bi-partisan agreement. The filibuster will be used in extraordinary circumstances. No one can say what this means, of course, and we think that proper. It is the constitutional responsibility of each United States Senator to decide what constitutes extraordinary circumstances. The procedural mechanism of the filibuster is designed for extraordinary circumstances. If the circumstances are not extraordinary, the laws or nominees in question will be able to win the supermajority needed for cloture.
There is another significant aspect to the Memorandum. It reads:
under Article II, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution, the word "Advice" speaks to the consultation between the Senate and the President with regard to the use of the President's power make nominations. We encourage the Executive branch of the government to consult with members of the Senate, both Democratic and Republican, prior to submitting a judicial nomination to the Senate for consideration.
Many citizens and commentators consider that the President's judicial nominees were calculated to generate opposition; he nominated judges he expected to be controversial, in order to provoke a controversy. If that is the case, we hope that this agreement will end such tactics.
The Memorandum ends with a hope that the agreement may "reduce the rancor" that characterizes the political culture of the Senate. The Republican-voting and Democratic-voting students who opposed the nuclear option thank their elected officials for expressing this sentiment and hope that it may be made into fact.
A seat will soon open on the Supreme Court. America needs a Justice who will respect its laws and its citizens. We hope that the President nominates a judge, against whom a filibuster will be inconceivable, because a clear majority of Senators approve the nominee's qualifications. We have our differences but, for the highest court in the land, we should be able to put them aside.
The bulk of the Senate opposed rule changes. The bulk of the Senate agreed that the President should consult the Senate in the act of choosing his nominees. These are both victories for the students who participated in mock filibusters all over the country. These are victories for all citizens in the United States of America.