Joshua Katz

Agreed, but this motion was not defeated. By whom? It seems to me that whoever made this ruling was incorrect if no point of order was raised at the time to the voting method. Seemingly, an incorrect ruling was issued, but there was no point of order/appeal to that incorrect ruling. Thus, I suppose the parliamentary position is as if the motion had never been adopted, and it is in order to make the motion again. It's bad enough that the "bite at the apple" phrase has become so popular in the law, despite its absurdity (you can bite apples twice!). Let's not let it infect parliamentary procedure as well.

The first part of this sentence is the key. Officers have such powers as are given to them in the bylaws. Thus, the President has such powers as are given in the bylaws, and no more. The only exception would be if a person or body (such as a board) both has a power, and has the power to delegate said power, and chooses to delegate it to the President. Failing that, the President has no inherent unilateral power to make decisions. Sometimes, officers act in excess of their powers, in the hopes that the appropriate body will later agree with them. When doing so, they run the risk that the deliberative body will not agree, and they will face discipline. Note: This answer depends on the assumption that "they" means the President. If there is a board involved (as in, the President thinks that the board has unilateral powers...) then the answer will probably still be that powers must be in the bylaws, but some details might change.

It seems to me that, for those members eligible to be selected, such eligibility is a right of membership, and thus, the rules cannot (in the future) be suspended to declare them ineligible. It seems to me that GWCTD is answering a question I did not address, namely, what to do about it now (nothing).

No, you can't retroactively suspend the rules, nor may the rules be suspended even prospectively for the purpose of denying members rights of participation.

I'm not aware of any version of RONR which says what you quote. In any event, though, what exactly do your rules/bylaws say in adopting a parliamentary authority?

That's why I only responded to Dr. Kapur. Mr. Gerber's response made sense to me. Exactly. The problem with hearsay is that the person making the decision lacks many of the clues we use to judge whether or not to believe a person - including, in some cases envisioned by RONR, who the declarant is. Instead, they hear from a witness whose reliability can be judged, but is useless for determining whether or not the statement is true. This is roughly analogous to the reasoning in Maryland v. Craig, so at least a majority of the SC finds found it compelling.

Hearsay rules apply in civil as well as criminal trials, where there is no risk of loss of freedom and the standard of proof is preponderance of the evidence. The thing is, I only think the potential risk to the defendant matters if the rule were, in fact, tilting the playing field. If, for instance, a rule of evidence applies asymmetrically, and is there to protect one side even at the expense of loss of accuracy (Crawford is an example), then the justification might well turn on the risk the defendant faces. But the rule here is symmetric, and can be used just as easily to evade penalties as to impose them, so why is the potential penalty relevant to whether or not we should have the rule?

I hesitate to agree with "always" because one of the things I work out ahead of time is "when I need you to stop, you agree to stop." After we've talked, the chair will decide what he decides, and of course I use this very sparingly, but I use a little card with a stop sign on it to signal this situation. I also keep a few other cards out that I can slip to him - in order, out of order, majority, 2/3, etc.

That depends on your bylaws. The board has exactly as much authority as the bylaws give it. Most boards, however, are certainly empowered to take actions - it's what separates them from committees. There's little point in having a board that can only make recommendations, since the point is to govern the society. On a particular topic, though, your bylaws may limit the board to making recommendations. Also, if the board chooses to make a recommendation, it can do so, so this also depends on the phrasing of the motion that was or was not adopted by the board.

I think we'd need more context. It seems relatively impossible for most executive board decisions to be confidential - if you raise fees, or expel someone, or rent gerbil balls, or whatever, people are going to notice. In any case, the membership can require the board to produce its minutes by a 2/3 vote. Also, unless your rules give the board exclusive authority over an area, the membership can do more than make a recommendation - it can reverse what the board has decided and do something else. The board answers to the membership, not the other way around. Unless, of course, the board meets in executive session - but even then, while the discussion and debate must be secret, almost any decision is going to be visible. One thing that puzzles me, as I wrote the above response (yours came in while I was typing and I decided to go ahead and finish) is how to treat decisions made in executive session which are not obvious, or not visible until fully executed. The membership has the right, unless the board has exclusive authority, to reverse the decision, but in practice can't do so without knowing about it. The membership won't even know there's something to consider overturning until it is too late because the membership won't know the reason the board went into executive session.

Thank you.

A corporate charter is relevant only in the case of a corporation. If you don't have one, it's likely because your organization is not incorporated (or it could be because you do have one, but it's sitting in a desk drawer somewhere and no one knows about it). In any case, it's a document issued by a state creating a corporation, i.e. an entity treated by the law as existing separately from its members. Hard to say. Any procedural rules in the ICPA will take precedence (so far as parliamentary procedure is concerned), followed by your bylaws. As for declarations, administrative rules, and courtesy rules, the best we can really do at this point is guess as to what they correspond to in RONR. My guess (which is all it is) is that they are standing rules. A better way to figure it out, though, is to look at your bylaws. Do they say anything about these other rules? Regarding the remainder of the post: these sound more like legal than parliamentary issues.

It's been a while since I read RONR straight through, and I had forgotten about the passage Mr. Martin quoted on a different thread (I didn't reply there so as to prevent confusing the OP). It really is, in my view, rather astonishing though: “To get at the truth under the conditions of such a trial, hearsay evidence has to be admissible, and judgment as to the best interests of the society may have to be based on it. Witnesses are not sworn. The persons with first-hand knowledge may be nonmembers, who probably will decline to testify, and may be willing only to reveal the facts privately to a single member on condition that their names in no way be connected with the case. Even members may be reluctant to give formal testimony against the accused. A member can be required to testify at a trial on pain of expulsion, but it is very seldom advisable to force such an issue.” (RONR, 11th ed., pg. 655) Of course, yes, those conditions may come to pass, just as they may come to pass in the legal context. It's not clear to me why they outweigh the more common concern: hearsay is inherently unreliable precisely because the decision-makers cannot judge the honesty of the declarant, cannot observe the declarant and look for body language, etc., and because it cannot be confronted or cross-examined. The primary reason given for allowing hearsay is "to get at the truth," but that doesn't explain much, since the prohibition on hearsay in the law is not one of those contexts (except, potentially, in Crawford cases otherwise permitted under the FREs) where we are valuing fairness over accuracy; hearsay is prohibited for accuracy reasons. Nor does it help to say we admit it because the penalties are lower than in the legal context - the rule here allows hearsay to be introduced by either side, so it's not tilting things, just generally making the evidence less reliable. Finally, it doesn't help to say that organizations tend to be different from legal contexts because people largely know each other, at least by reputation - that doesn't help when, as is discussed in the quote, the declarant is unknown. So my question is - why should we believe that, in the context of an organizational disciplinary proceeding, admitting hearsay gets at the truth more effectively than not doing so?

Of course, it could fall to the ground if a point of order were raised and well taken 😉

Yes.

You refuse if elected, although it saves people time if you tell them when nominated that you won't accept the position.

Me neither. Have you raised a point of order that the chair, not someone else, should be ruling on points of order?

The Parliamentarian is an advisor to the chair. In general, he should wait for the chair to ask him questions. If something is severe enough (i.e. rights being trampled) he should signal the chair that they need to consult, and the chair should have the assembly stand at ease while he speaks to the Parliamentarian. The Parliamentarian should not address the assembly, however.

It would be hard to say without getting involved with the specifics, which goes beyond the scope of this forum.

Well, if the goal is to add it to the bylaws, then you can easily make it however you'd like it since your bylaws take precedence. (That, of course, says nothing about whether or not it's a good idea.) And, if currently there is no parliamentarian, then I don't see a problem with the chair asking for advice. I'm not sure what you mean by "bouncer" though. If he's just raising points of order, he's not acting as a parliamentarian at all.

I think a special rule of order would suffice. But are you talking about a bylaws-defined position, or simply someone the chair can ask questions to? The chair can ask anyone he wants for advice without giving that person a title and invoking the rules about impartiality. (Of course, people might still object to the chair getting advice from someone who is not impartial.) Assuming you are not using small board rules, this is contrary to RONR, which says the chair should not participate in debate, and (perhaps more importantly) may vote when it would impact the outcome, not only to break ties. I say the latter is more important because the chair (assuming he is a member) has the right to participate and to vote, but is expected not to exercise those rights while presiding.

I agree with Dr. Kapur and Mr. Brown. However, I suspect that, like many HOAs, you have what is not primarily a RONR problem, but rather a governance problem. Your board lets its employees push them around and tell them what to do. You can do that within RONR, but that doesn't make it a good idea. Sure, we can go through a meeting and have great fun reconciling each action with RONR (non-member may preside, non-member have no right to speak, etc.) but that won't change the fact that your hired management company and hired attorney are essentially running the show, with your board there as ornamentation. But that's a question only the board (and the members, when electing the board) can take up - no point of order will fix it.

I would suggest giving notice, then, so that it requires only a majority vote. Again, though, you don't really need to decide, since if any of the three thresholds are reached, the motion is adopted.

No, the full membership is all the members, not the average meeting attendance. Does your organization have a roster of members, that is, of all people entitled to attend and participate in meetings? The "entire membership" is everyone on the list, and a majority of the entire membership is more than half the number of people on that list.

"Entire membership" means the full membership of the body which is meeting (which is the latter, presumably, if this is a membership meeting, and is the total number of people on the board if it's a board meeting), not those present at the meeting.