Parliamentary procedure

Parliamentary procedures are the accepted rules, ethics, and customs governing meetings of an assembly or organization. Their 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. Erskine May's Parliamentary Practice is used and often referred to as "Erskine May" in the United Kingdom, and influential in other countries that use the Westminster system. In the United States, terms used are 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.

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:

The Westminster parliamentary procedures are followed in several Commonwealth countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and South Africa, as well as in the Republic of Ireland.

In Canada, for example, the House of Commons uses House of Commons Procedure and Practice as its primary procedural authority. Others include Arthur Beauchesne's Parliamentary Rules and Forms of the House of Commons of Canada, Sir John George Bourinot's Parliamentary Procedure and Practice in the Dominion of Canada, and Erskine May's The Law, Privileges, Proceedings and Usage of Parliament from Britain.

The rules of the United States Congress were developed from parliamentary procedures used in Britain. Many nations' legislatures follow American parliamentary procedure, including Indonesia, the Philippines, Mexico and South Korea.