Are Filibusters Used Outside the United States?
Louisiana Senator Huey Long (Photo: Library of Congress)
Lawmakers in Austin, Texas, stayed up late on Tuesday, thanks to State Representative Wendy Davis, who staged a filibuster to prevent a bill restricting abortion from passing before a midnight deadline expired.
Texas Republicans tried to push the bill through anyway, but eventually the bill missed that deadline.
Filibusters are pretty common here in the US but it’s a tradition that often strikes outsiders as strange.
We wanted to find out more about filibusters: Where do they come from and what other countries, if any, use them?
So we contacted Gerry Loewenberg, a political science professor at the University of Iowa.
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