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RONR vs AIP Standard Code of Parliamentary Procedure


gpeastwoo

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RONR is more widely used which is its greatest advantage. According to AIP (which studies various parliamentary authorities including RNOR) 90% of bodies use RONR and only 8% use TSC. RONR is the lingua franca. You are far less likely to find someone well versed in TSC than RONR and there is much less support material out there for it. The much larger National Association of Parliamentarians (from which AIP broke off from) uses only RONR. 

 

As to the substantive differences, RONR is generally more traditional while TSC has several simplifications. Wikipedia has a brief summary of some of the major ones.

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RONR is more widely used which is its greatest advantage. According to AIP (which studies various parliamentary authorities including RNOR) 90% of bodies use RONR and only 8% use TSC. RONR is the lingua franca. You are far less likely to find someone well versed in TSC than RONR and there is much less support material out there for it. The much larger National Association of Parliamentarians (from which AIP broke off from) uses only RONR. 

 

As to the substantive differences, RONR is generally more traditional while TSC has several simplifications. Wikipedia has a brief summary of some of the major ones.

Thank you very much... Dave

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To pile on.

RONR is the parliamentary authority that is most common at the level that most people will find themselves at.  You become a member of your local school board or church social group, then you will almost certainly be using RONR.  But more than this, I would say that RONR is the most misunderstood guide out there simply because most people that use it don't read it or RONRIB.  Just look at the sort of questions we get on this forum. 

Chair got angry, declared meeting adjourned and left.  Was the meeting over?

What do we do if the motion to adopt the minutes doesn't pass?

Can I change something passed at the last meeting?

When I got up to speak, someone called the question.  Should I have been allowed to finish my statement?

In a small committee, can the chair make/second a motion?

Etc. 

I would say 90% or more of the threads in this forum would not exist if anybody in the meeting had done a cursory read of RONR or read RONRIB (or read the previous dozens of threads on the exact same question but that is a different topic).  

 

OK so how does that address the OP?  If your body uses Mason's, Demeter's, TSC or their own rules (BTW: congrats on being elected to Congress), most of the members will know the rules and there is probably a professional parliamentarian that can offer advice on unusual circumstances*  and you do not have the abuse (intentional or unintentional) you see with many bodies that use RONR.

 

 

 

 

 

*Like when Sen. Franken was presiding over the U.S. Senate and as the junior Senator from Minnesota objected to Sen. Lieberman extending his remarks.  There was no rules controversy although if this had happened in a City Council meeting using RONR, more likely than not some or all of the council members may not have known if the council's chair could do that and what to do if they thought it was out of order.

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RONR is more widely used which is its greatest advantage. According to AIP (which studies various parliamentary authorities including RNOR) 90% of bodies use RONR and only 8% use TSC. RONR is the lingua franca. You are far less likely to find someone well versed in TSC than RONR and there is much less support material out there for it. The much larger National Association of Parliamentarians (from which AIP broke off from) uses only RONR. 

 

As to the substantive differences, RONR is generally more traditional while TSC has several simplifications. Wikipedia has a brief summary of some of the major ones.

 

I'm reasonably sure that this 8% estimate by the AIP of the use of its Standard Code is way too high. About the only organizations using it that I know of are all in some way connected to the medical profession. My understanding is that this is because there was a time when the committee which was charged with the authorship of one of the editions of Sturgis was comprised of a group of MD's. This understanding of mine may well be faulty, however, and if so, I'd be happy to have it corrected. 

 

In any event, to say that the fact that RONR is most widely used is its greatest advantage manages to miss the point completely. It is used by the vast majority of organizations in the United States because it is, as all editions of Robert's Rules of Order from 1876 on have been, the most accurate and useful codification anywhere to be found of what is understood as constituting common parliamentary law in the United States (omitting provisions having no application outside legislative bodies). It is, in fact, of such great quality and usefulness that it has also now been adopted by a great many organizations outside of the United States as being their parliamentary authority as well. It has no equal (or anything approaching one).

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For more information on American Institute of Parliamentarians Standard Code of Parliamentary Procedure (AIPSC), I suggest that Dave B contact AIP through its website www.aipparl.org  Members of AIP, as well as non-members, may submit questions through links on the home page. AIP also has produced several publications to assist in the study of AIPSC and RONR. So far as I know, users of AIPSC are mostly medical and dental organizations.

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OK so how does that address the OP?  If your body uses Mason's, Demeter's, TSC or their own rules (BTW: congrats on being elected to Congress), most of the members will know the rules and there is probably a professional parliamentarian that can offer advice on unusual circumstances*  and you do not have the abuse (intentional or unintentional) you see with many bodies that use RONR.

 

Have you actually ran into a non-state-legislature that uses Mason's?

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No and that's the point. Most state legislators know the rules of their body and there's usually a parliamentarian to advise the chair on what their rules state. I find this to be the opposite of most bodies that use RONR.

I think there is some truth to this, but why are Demeter and The Standard Code lumped in with Mason's Manual in your argument?

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Of course most state legislatures use Mason's Manual. It's designed for them, and the copyright is owned by the National Conference of State Legislatures. What surprises me is that maybe three or four state legislatures still use Robert's Rules of Order, since, as I noted in post #7, RONR omits provisions having no application outside of legislative bodies (meaning, primarily, bicameral legislatures). RONR is very widely used by city and county councils, as well as governmental boards of all sorts.

 

I rather like Demeter's Manual, but as far as I know, only a very few organizations actually use it. Its biggest mistake is its assumption that court decisions have something to do with the formation of parliamentary law.

 

But I don't know what any of the preceding references in this thread to Mason and Demeter have to do with the question asked in post #1.

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But I don't know what any of the preceding references in this thread to Mason and Demeter have to do with the question asked in post #1.

Simply put, I contend one of the differences between RONR and those other rules of order (toroo) is that most organizations that use toroo know what their books say while many organizations that use RONR don't know what is actually in it.

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In any event, to say that the fact that RONR is most widely used is its greatest advantage manages to miss the point completely. It is used by the vast majority of organizations in the United States because it is, as all editions of Robert's Rules of Order from 1876 on have been, the most accurate and useful codification anywhere to be found of what is understood as constituting common parliamentary law in the United States (omitting provisions having no application outside legislative bodies). It is, in fact, of such great quality and usefulness that it has also now been adopted by a great many organizations outside of the United States as being their parliamentary authority as well. It has no equal (or anything approaching one).

 

Would you say that RONR is more like a codification of common parliamentary law and not a unified 'statute' developed for organizations to adopt? The comparison I'm making is say between a Uniform Act published by the Uniform Law Commission versus a Restatement of Law published by the American Law Institute. RONR seems to do both, but I've always thought of parliamentary authorities to be more like the former.

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Would you say that RONR is more like a codification of common parliamentary law and not a unified 'statute' developed for organizations to adopt? The comparison I'm making is say between a Uniform Act published by the Uniform Law Commission versus a Restatement of Law published by the American Law Institute. RONR seems to do both, but I've always thought of parliamentary authorities to be more like the former.

RONR itself states that it is a codification of the general parliamentary law (omitting provisions having no application outside of legislative bodies) and a manual for organizations to adopt as their parliamentary authority. See RONR, 11th ed., pg. xxix.

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To more directly answer the OP's question, I recommend checking the wiki for "The standard code" which gives a short and perhaps too concise list of significant differences.  There are some differences in the way certain motions are handled as well as the name of certain motions, for example.  However, if a new organization is considering a parliamentary authority I would almost always recommend RONR. The book itself is much more comprehensive, and there are supporting volumes (e.g. RONR in brief) to help new members come up to speed.  The only exception would be if the prospective members were already more familiar with another authority, which might be the case here...

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RONR itself states that it is a codification of the general parliamentary law (omitting provisions having no application outside of legislative bodies) and a manual for organizations to adopt as their parliamentary authority. See RONR, 11th ed., pg. xxix.

 

I'm not asking if it is both, that is obvious. I'm asking what Honemann sees it more as (maybe he sees the purposes equally as important), as a follow up to his reponse to me in post #7.

 

It doesn't necessarily logically follow that the most "accurate codification of common parliamentary law" would make the most "useful" parliamentary authority (and if accuracy to customary law was the prevailing criteria, I would presume groups outside of the US would be better off adopting an authority based on their own country's customs).

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