FILIBLUSTER.

The battle in the United States Senate over judicial filibusters has been a field day for martial metaphors (such as "field day," an eighteenth-century term for a day of military exercises). On May 23rd, war clouds were gathering ominously over the Capitol. The triggering of what had been dubbed the nuclear option seemed just hours away. Armageddon was at hand. Then--like the Wild Bunch, or the Seven Samurai times two, or the Dirty Dozen plus two--a squad of fourteen centrists, half Republicans and half Democrats, rode to the rescue. Their agreement called for (a) free passes for three of President Bush's pending appeals-court nominations, (b) future nominees to be filibustered only in "extraordinary circumstances" (with everyone free to decide when such circumstances exist), and (c) no funny business with Senate Rule XXII--the rule under which it takes sixty of the one hundred senators to end a filibuster (and sixty-seven to end debate on changing the rule under which it takes sixty).

At that point, the metaphors turned peaceable. "The republic is saved!" Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic leader, cried. "The nuclear option is off the table!" But the new status quo is at best an armistice. "It's a truce, not a treaty," Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, said the other day. The most likely eventuality is that the Pact of Fourteen will turn out to have been a brief cease-fire, destined to be supplanted by full-blown hostilities at the drop of a Supreme Court vacancy.

Meanwhile, the skirmishing over terminology--the metaphor war--continues. The nuclear option was named by Senator Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi, in a moment of carelessness. It sounds like a bad thing, so Democrats eagerly adopted it. Republicans, embarrassed, have tried mightily to persuade the press and the public that the phrase is a Democratic calumny, and that the proper term is "constitutional option," which sounds like a good thing. The idea behind the option, however it is styled, is that filibusters of judicial nominations would be declared unconstitutional, not by any court but on a point of order by the President of the Senate--one Dick Cheney. Such a ruling would require only a simple majority of senators to be upheld.

The arguments on both sides of the debate over the constitutionality of the filibuster were thoroughly rehearsed back in 1993, in clashing articles on the op-ed page of the Washington Post. One side contended that the filibuster is unconstitutional because the Constitution, by mandating supermajorities in some cases, implicitly forbids them in others; because the Constitution requires only fifty-one senators to be in the room to do normal business; and because requiring sixty votes makes nonsense of the Vice-President's constitutional role as a Senate tie-breaker. The other side contended that the filibuster is constitutional because the Constitution says that the Senate may make its own rules; because the filibuster is hallowed by long practice; and because nothing in the Constitution requires that every bill or nomination must be brought to a final vote. One side, quoting Madison, invoked the democratic principle of majority rule; the other, quoting Jefferson, invoked the democratic principle of minority rights.

In 1993, the anti-filibuster op-ed gladiator was Lloyd Cutler, a distinguished Democratic lawyer, who had served as President Carter's White House counsel and was later President Clinton's (and who died on May 8th, aged eighty-seven). The pro-filibuster combatants were George F. Will, the conservative columnist, and Howard Baker, a former Senate Republican ...