Parliamentary procedure

Parliamentary procedure is the accepted rules, ethics, and customs governing meetings of an assembly or organization. Its object is to allow orderly deliberation upon questions of interest to the organization and thus to arrive at the sense or the will of the majority of the assembly upon these questions. Self-governing organizations follow parliamentary procedure to debate and reach group decisions, usually by vote, with the least possible friction. In the United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and other English-speaking countries, parliamentary procedure is often called chairmanship, chairing, the law of meetings, procedure at meetings, the conduct of meetings, or the standing orders. In the United States, it is referred to as parliamentary law, parliamentary practice, legislative procedure, rules of order, or Robert's rules of order. Rules of order consist of rules written by the body itself (often referred to as bylaws), usually supplemented by a published parliamentary authority adopted by the body. Typically, national, state or provincial and other full-scale legislative assemblies have extensive internally written rules of order, whereas non-legislative bodies write and adopt a limited set of specific rules as the need arises. History of parliamentary procedure The term parliamentary procedure gets its name from its use in the parliamentary system of government. In the 16th and 17th century, the parliaments of England began adopting rules of order. In the 1560s, Sir Thomas Smyth began the process of writing down accepted procedures and published a book about them for the House of Commons in 1583. Early rules included: One subject should be discussed at a time (adopted 1581) Personal attacks are to be avoided in debate (1604) Debate must be limited to the merits of the question (1610) Division of a question into parts to be voted on separately (1640) The Westminster parliamentary procedures are followed in several Commonwealth countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and South Africa.