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Serota on Filibuster Reform

By Lawrence Solum

Michael Serota (University of California, Berkeley, School of Law) has posted Breaking the Gridlock in the Senate: A Proposal for a Bipartisan Filibuster Commission (Georgetown Public Policy Review Online, March 2010) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Any resolution to fixing the filibuster must have bipartisan appeal, but in particular, it must somehow safeguard the interests of the minority party, which has the most to lose by giving up the right to use it. With this in mind, I propose a new Senate rule that would create a special bipartisan committee to reconcile filibustered legislation and make it appropriate for a majority vote in the Senate.

A very short paper, outlining Serota's proposal. Of course, it takes 2/3rds of the Senate to achieve cloture on rule changes.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on June 02, 2010 (boomark / email).