r of business
adapted to its special wants. The following is the usual order where no
special rule is adopted, and when more than one regular meeting is held
each year:
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(1) Reading of the minutes of the last meeting.
(2) Reports of Boards of Trustees or Managers, and Standing Committees.
(3) Reports of Select Committees.
(4) Unfinished Business (including questions postponed to this meeting).
(5) New Business.
Business cannot be considered out of its order, except by a two-thirds
vote; but a majority can lay on the table the different questions as
they come up, and thus reach a subject they wish first to consider. If
a subject has been made a Special Order for this meeting, then it is to
be considered immediately after the minutes are read.
73. Amendments of Constitutions, By-Laws and Rules of Order, should be
permitted only when adopted by a two-thirds vote, at a regular meeting
of the society, after having been proposed at the previous regular
meeting. If the meetings are very frequent, weekly, for instance,
amendments should be adopted only at the quarterly meetings, after
having been proposed at the previous quarterly meeting.
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Legal Rights of Assemblies and the Trial of their Members.
The Right of Deliberative Assemblies to Punish their Members. A
deliberative assembly has the inherent right to make and enforce its own
laws and punish an offender--the extreme penalty, however, being
expulsion from its own body. When expelled, if the assembly is a
permanent society, it has a right, for its own protection, to give
public notice that the person has ceased to be a member of that society.
But it has no right to go beyond what is necessary for self protection
and publish the charges against the member. In a case where a member of
a society was expelled, and an officer of the society published, by
their order, a statement of the grave charges upon which he had been found
guilty, the expelled member recovered damages from the officer, in a
suit for libel--the court holding that the truth of the charges did
not affect the case.
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The Right of an Assembly to Eject any one from its place of meeting.
Every deliberative assembly has the right to decide who may be present
during its sessio
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