Who said it?
We teach our kids when they’re little that rules are made to be followed; that unjust or unwise rules can be challenged and ultimately changed; that the rules for challenging or changing them are especially important; and that those rules, at least while we’re playing the same game, can’t be broken but must be obeyed. What’s true even of a child’s game is doubly true in adult political life. Ripping up the rules for changing the rules is unacceptable if one believes in a rule-governed democracy. For a mere majority simply to plow ahead and have its way even when the rules in place haven’t been changed in accord with their own provision for change is to reduce rules to mere suggestions.
None other than Laurence Tribe, proponent of a “living” or “evolving” Constitution, litigant on behalf of Al Gore in Florida 2000, extolling the virtues of unchanging, agreed-upon rules as a good in and of themselves. I kid you not (via NRO Bench Memos). Me, I think it should be easier for the Senate, by majority vote of all Senators, to change the parliamentary rules of the Senate than for judges to change the meaning of the Constitution enacted by the People. But hey, what do I know?