Robert's Rules of Order Day

What the day is

This day is observed on May 2, marking the parliamentary manual that governs how an enormous number of meetings are run.

Origin and background

The book exists because of one bad evening. In 1863 a young United States Army engineer was asked without warning to preside over a church meeting, discovered he had no idea how to do it, and watched the meeting fall apart. He resolved not to attend another until he understood the rules, and then found that no common rules existed: every society improvised, and anyone moving between regions found the procedure changing under them. He published his manual in 1876, adapting the rules of the House of Representatives for ordinary organizations.

The purpose is regularly misunderstood. Parliamentary procedure is not formality for its own sake; it exists to hold a specific balance. The majority gets to decide, the minority gets a full and fair hearing, absent members are protected from decisions taken behind their backs, and every member has an equal right to be heard. The machinery of motions, seconds and amendments serves that balance, and without it the machinery is pointless.

The most abused device is the motion to table. In American usage it means setting something aside temporarily, and it is routinely misused to kill a proposal without debating it, which the manual specifically says is improper, the correct motions being postponement or an actual vote. In British usage tabling means close to the opposite, putting something forward for discussion, which causes genuine confusion in international bodies.

One practical point is almost universally missed. The book relaxes its own rules for small boards and committees, roughly a dozen people or fewer, where motions need no second and members may speak without first being recognized. A great many small nonprofit boards are considerably more formal than the manual actually asks them to be.

The authoritative version is the regularly revised edition; many similarly titled books have no connection to it.

How to take part

• Check which edition your organization actually adopted in its bylaws.
• Use the small-board rules if your board is small. You are permitted to.
• Learn the point of order, and how to appeal a ruling from the chair.
• Remember that tabling a motion is not a legitimate way to kill it.