Parliamentary Procedure

Formal procedure followed in the conduct of any meeting, usually following Roberts' Rules of Order. Parliamentary procedures are followed to expedite the orderly conduct of a meeting's agenda.

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“So much of what we do around here [in Congress],” House Republican leader Robert Michel observed, “is determined by how we do it.” Parliamentary procedure is the “how” by which Congress operates. It is the collected rules and precedents—the previous actions of the Senate and House and rulings of their presiding officers. It is also the customs, courtesies, and accepted behavior of Congress. Parliamentary procedure establishes the daily routines of the House and Senate. It sets the ways in which members seek recognition on the floor, address the chair and each other, introduce bills and resolutions, and seek to win the passage of legislation or to block it through objections, amendments, filibusters, and other tactics within the rules of order.

The United States inherited its basic parliamentary procedures from the British Parliament during the colonial era. New England town meetings and colonial legislatures followed these traditional methods of operating, as did the Continental Congress, the Congress under the Articles of Confederation, the Constitutional Convention, and the U.S. Congress. In 1801 President Thomas Jefferson published the first volume of parliamentary procedure in the United States, known as Jefferson's manual, which is still part of the House rules.

The House and Senate adopt their own rules and set precedents by their actions. Parliamentarians on the staff of both houses compile and study these rules and precedents in order to advise the presiding officers on how to keep the floor proceedings moving fairly and properly.

To casual visitors in the galleries, the procedures on the House and Senate floor may seem excessively formal. But the parliamentary procedure that they are witnessing evolved over 200 years of legislative activity to enable the Senate and House to function in ways that are reasonably fair and efficient. The procedures prevent presiding officers from ruling arbitrarily, and they ensure that both sides have an opportunity to be heard and to offer their own bills and amendments. Although their emotions often rise over the immediate issues before them, members of Congress have adopted parliamentary procedures that enable them to operate in a rational and orderly manner.

See also Jefferson's manual; Precedents, congressional; Rules of the House and Senate

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: a body of rules followed by an assembly
  Synonyms: order, rules of order, parliamentary law

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