The filibuster hasn't been a part of the US Senate forever but you'd be excused for thinking it was. For the last 180 odd years, the ability of the minority party to grind Senate proceedings to a halt with a speech has been an important and ever-present component in the recipe for American law. And now, as is often the case in the short windows of time in American politics when one party controls all the levers of power, there's a lot of talk among Democrats about eliminating or reforming the filibuster to make it easier to legislate. So how did we get here? How did the filibuster evolve to become the weapon of obstruction that it's so often used as today? What are the consequences of getting rid of it all together? And what would that even look like? Dr. Ben Dworkin, Director of the Rowan Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship at Rowan University in Glassboro, NJ joins KYW Newsradio In Depth to break down what the filibuster started as, what it is today, and what happens if it goes away forever.

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