Contents
What Is Robert’s Rules of Order?
The Deliberative Assembly
Motions
Officers
Minutes
Standard Order of Business
Committees
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- Basic tenets and principles of parliamentary procedure
- Rules and decorum for meetings, sessions, motions, and debates of all kinds
- Duties and responsibilities of each of the assembly’s major officers
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What Is Robert’s Rules of Order?
Robert’s Rules of Order is a document that explains general parliamentary procedure. Its current edition, Robert’s Rules of Order Newly Revised (RRONR), is the standard reference for all types of business meetings that require a parliamentary authority, from small local organizations to large corporations. RRONR provides guidelines that protect the rights of individual group members, the majority, the minority, absentees, and all parties as a whole.
Basic Principles of Parliamentary Procedure
Businesses and groups of all kinds follow basic rules of procedure to govern their organization, hold effective meetings, and ensure fair treatment for all of their members. Parliamentary procedure is based on the following principles:
- A quorum must be present to take legal action. A quorum is the minimum number of members who must be present to transact business legally.
- All members are equal. Each member of an organization has equal rights. No member’s vote counts more than another’s.
- Members bring business before an assembly in the form of a motion. A motion is a formal proposal of business.
- Only one formal proposal to take certain action may be under consideration at a time. Members may consider only one basic form of motion, or main motion, at a time. Members seeking to make secondary motions (which deal with how a main motion will be handled) must make them before adopting, rejecting, or disposing of the main motion.
- Only one member may have the floor at a time. When a member has been assigned the floor, other members normally may not interrupt.
- Full debate is allowed on all questions, unless the rules do not allow debate. Members may debate fully each proposed main motion. Certain secondary motions, however, are not debatable.
- The issue, not the person, is always what is under consideration. Members should confine their remarks to the merits of the pending question and should not make disparaging comments about other members or their motives.
- The organization is paramount compared to the individual. Individual members can make motions but not decisions. Only the organization can make a decision, and it does so through its voting members.
- A majority vote decides, unless a larger vote is required. A majority vote—the affirmative vote of more than half of those members present and voting—decides most questions. Certain motions that affect basic rights of members and changes to particular rules of the assembly usually require a two-thirds vote for adoption. Two-thirds is defined as at least twice as many members in favor as opposed.
- Abstentions count as zero. The assembly does not consider an abstention an affirmative or negative vote; it simply does not count it at all.
- Once an assembly decides a question, that question cannot come back before the assembly in the same form. Members cannot ask the assembly to decide the same question twice in the same session unless they amend, rescind, or reconsider the previously adopted question.
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