This is Democracy – Episode 138: The Filibuster

Jeremi and Zachary, with Dr. Sean Theriault discuss congressional politics and question whether the U.S. Senate should continue to have a rule for a Filibuster. Dr. Sean Theriault is a professor in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a leading scholar of American political institutions, and the U.S. Congress in particular. Sean has published five books: Congress: The First Branch (with Mickey Edwards; Oxford University Press, 2020), The Great Broadening (with Bryan Jones and Michelle Whyman; University of Chicago Press, 2019), The Gingrich Senators (Oxford University Press, 2013), Party Polarization in Congress (Cambridge University Press, 2008), and The Power of the People (Ohio State University Press, 2005). He has also published numerous articles in a variety of journals on subjects ranging from presidential rhetoric to congressional careers and the Louisiana Purchase to the Pendleton Act of 1883.