Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the United States Senate's current cloture and filibuster rules are contrary to the constitutional design of two co-equal majoritarian legislative bodies, are non-deliberative in practice, disenfranchise Members of the House of Representatives and their constituents, and disrupt the proper balance of powers between the two chambers of Congress, and for other purposes.

The Constitution entrusts each House with the power to determine its own rules of proceeding (Article I, Section 5, Clause 2). This grants the Senate plenary discretion to adopt rules such as cloture and filibuster, which are designed to protect deliberation and prevent the tyranny of a transient majority—a principle I defended in Federalist No. 22 as necessary to guard against the mischiefs of faction and mutable policy. A resolution asserting that Senate cloture rules are 'contrary to the constitutional design' misapprehends the text, which nowhere requires simple majority rule for ending de…

The Constitution vests the legislative power in a bicameral Congress (Article I, Section 1). Each House is left to determine its own rules (Article I, Section 5, Clause 2). There is no textual requirement that either chamber adopt a specific supermajority threshold for cloture; such rules are procedural choices. However, if a rule such as the filibuster effectively requires a supermajority to pass ordinary legislation, it conflicts with the republican principle that simple majorities should govern (as implied by Article I, Section 3 on impeachment by majority of the House, and Article II, Sect…

The resolution expresses an opinion on the Senate's internal rulemaking authority, which is a matter reserved to each chamber under the Constitution. The Senate's cloture and filibuster rules, though not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, derive from the Senate's power to 'determine the Rules of its Proceedings' (Article I, Section 5, Clause 2). However, the resolution's claim that these rules are 'contrary to the constitutional design of two co-equal majoritarian legislative bodies' requires careful examination. The Constitution does not require that both chambers be identically majori…

This resolution, while merely expressing the sense of the House, purports to declare the Senate's internal rules unconstitutional. Each House is granted exclusive authority to determine its own proceedings by Article I, Section 5, Clause 2. As such, the Constitution vests in the Senate the sole power to adopt its own rules, including cloture and filibuster procedures. To the extent that this resolution asserts that those rules are contrary to the constitutional design, it encroaches on the Senate's independent rulemaking authority, which the judiciary has long recognized as a political questio…