Questions of Order in the U.S. Senate: Procedural Uncertainty and the Role of the Parliamentarian

Anthony J. Madonna, Michael S. Lynch and Ryan D. Williamson

Social Science Quarterly, 2019, vol. 100, issue 4, 1343-1357

Abstract: Objectives Scholarship on the U.S. Senate has demonstrated the pivotal role the presiding officer can play when asked to interpret the chamber's rules and precedents. Therefore, our objective is to broadly evaluate how questions of order are arbitrated in the U.S. Senate. Methods Using a multinomial logistic regression, we estimate the effect of partisanship on adjudicating questions of order in the Senate before and after the institutionalization of the parliamentarian. Results Our results indicate that while short‐term partisan interests play an important role in determining how presiding officers interpret rules and precedents, the emergence of the Senate parliamentarian in the 1920s served to reduce uncertainty regarding procedural matters in the chamber. Conclusions This change has led to fewer instances of partisan rulings on questions of order and raised the costs of executing a drastic change in Senate procedure via unorthodox procedures. However, the introduction of the parliamentarian has not reduced the likelihood a ruling is overturned. As such, more narrow procedural changes have been used to support majorities over time.

Date: 2019
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