You Are Here
 |
Professor Lauren C. Bell |
1/8/13
Randolph-Macon College Associate Dean and
Political Science Professor Lauren Cohen Bell is the author of
Fixing the Filibuster: Why It's Easier Said Than Done. The article was recently published on Foreign Affairs.com, the online presence of
Foreign Affairs, a pre-eminent journal of world affairs. Bell was asked to write the piece after she was quoted in the November 24, 2012
New York Times article,
The Senate’s Long Slide to Gridlock. “This is a timely subject because the majority party leadership in the Senate wants to change the chamber’s rules of procedure to make it easier to prevent filibusters from happening,” says Bell. “But every time the Senate has tried to reduce or eliminate the filibuster, gridlock in the chamber has gotten worse.” She adds, “The editors of Foreign Affairs.com asked me to describe the history and dynamics of the procedure.”
Bell is the author of
Filibustering in the U.S. Senate (Cambria Press, 2011). She was inspired to write the book because “there are a lot of misconceptions about filibusters. Many people envision the classic filibuster scene in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but very few filibusters actually look like that anymore.”
Bell is also the author of
Warring Factions: Interest Groups, Money, and the New Politics of Senate Confirmation and The U.S. Congress: A Simulation for Students, as well as co-author of
Perspectives on Political Communication: A Case Approach with Randolph-Macon
Communication Studies Professors Ted Sheckels and Joan Conners. Her work has appeared in
The Journal of Politics,
Political Research Quarterly,
The Journal of Legislative Studies,
The Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, and
Judicature.
Bell, who joined the faculty at R-MC in 1999, earned her B.A. from the College of Wooster and her M.A. and Ph.D. from The Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center at The University of Oklahoma. She served as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow on the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary during the 1997–1998 academic year and was the United States Supreme Court Fellow at the United States Sentencing Commission in Washington, D.C. in 2006–2007.