Page:Roberts Rules of Order Revised 4th Edition (1915).djvu/70

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
64
RULES OF ORDER
[§ 18


sion[1] in an assembly having regular sessions as often as quarterly, the unfinished business should be taken up, just where it was interrupted, at the next succeeding session previous to new business; provided that, in a body elected, either wholly or in part, for a definite time (as a board of directors one-third of whom are elected annually), unfinished business falls to the ground with the expiration of the term for which the board, or any part of it, was elected.

(c) When the adjournment closes a session in an assembly which does not meet as often as quarterly, or when the assembly is an elective body, and this session ends the term of a portion of the members, the adjournment puts an end to all business unfinished at the close of the session. The business may be introduced at the next session, the same as if it had never been before the assembly.

18. Take a Recess.[2] This motion is practically a combination of the two preceding, to

  1. "All business before committees of the House at the end of one session shall be resumed at the commencement of the next session of the same Congress in the same manner as if no adjournment had taken place." H. R. Rule 26. In practice this rule is applied to business before the House as well as to that before committees. But unfinished business does not go over from one Congress to another Congress. When a society meets only once in six months or a year, there is liable to be as great a difference in the personnel of the two consecutive meetings as of two consecutive Congresses; and only trouble would result from allowing unfinished business to hold over to the next yearly meeting.
  2. Congress has omitted this motion from its latest revision of the list of privileged motions, on account of its abuse for filibustering purposes, and its being so seldom needed.