We are parliament members, so maybe this is a topic we should all become at least slightly familiar with. Especially since we are about to rewrite our floor rules.

I encourage you to hop over to wikipedia like I did and learn all you can. But in case you don't, here are some highlights for you.

Why Parliamentary Law is Important

"Without rules, there would be injustice and confusion. Hence, it is as necessary to follow the rules of parliamentary law as it is to follow the rules of a ball game or a card game". - Demeter

Demeter's five principles of parliamentary law:

• Order; that is there must be orderly procedure.
• Equality; that is, all members are equal before the rule or law.
• Justice. That is, "justice for all."
• Right of the minority to be heard on questions.
• Right of the majority to rule the organization.

Every member of parliament should have these rights. If a group of citizens elects a member, but then that member is cheated of their right to vote or to be heard, because the Parliament is a disorganized free-for-all, those voting citizens have been robbed of their constitutional rights to representation in government. Just as we need a constitution to protect our rights as citizens, we also need Parliamentary Law to protect our rights as Parliament members.

Parliamentary law manuals are thick books, difficult to read due to their complexity and use of latin jargon. They are too complex to be a good fit for the Aytos parliament; our rules need to be simple enough that any member easily understand and apply them. Also, transacting business on a subreddit is much different from a group of people assembled in person, which is what these rules are designed for.

But the principles behind parliamentary law absolutely apply to Aytos. We should use these principles as a checklist for our rules, making sure that our rules do everything that they are supposed to. (Also there is nothing wrong with borrowing a bit of latin jargon for flavor, as long as it's done in moderation and doesn't confuse people).

Goals of Parliamentary Law

Here are the 10 principles of "Mason's Manual of Legislative Procedure", and my thoughts on how they apply to the AFR Parliament. ("Mason's" is the manual used by all legislatures in the United States).

1. The group must have the authority to take the actions it purports to take;
2. there must be a meeting of the decision-making group;
3. a proper notice of the meeting must be given to all members of the group;
4. there must be a quorum present at the meeting;
5. there must be a question before the group upon which it can make a decision;
6. there must be an opportunity to debate the question;
7. the question must be decided by taking a vote;
8. there must be a majority vote to take an action or decide a question;
9. there must be no fraud, trickery or deception resulting in injury to another member;
10. and to be valid, any action or decision of a body must not violate any applicable law or constitutional provision.

1:

This was a main reason for APCOL. Parliament has constitutional authority to make laws. If we vote "aye" to a single vague sentence with no title, it's hard to say whether that means we passed a law or not.

It is good if our rules categorize the types of official actions that the Parliament is allowed to make. Such as a "motion to consider a bill", for example.

2-3:

Both of these are accomplished by the fact that everything we do is posted on the /r/aytosfp sub, and members are aware that it is their responsibility to check the sub regularly. So requiring all business to take place on the sub is important. So is making sure every member has enough time to see the post before any actions can take place. (This is the purpose of our three-day rule).

4:

"Quorum" means a minimum number of members must be present to transact any business. This prevents people from doing sketchy things like holding one-member "meetings" and passing things with 1-0 votes. In Aytos it has always been an unwritten rule that the quorum is the entire parliament. This rule works well for us, but maybe it should get written down.

5-7:

Everything that is done must be expressed as a question and voted on. This is pretty obvious, but it's important to be careful, when calling a vote, to identify exactly what the question is. This is why APCOL requires explicitly naming a bill whenever a vote is called.

Notice that "opportunity to debate" is listed here along with voting as a basic principle of a parliamentary system. This means denying someone their opportunity to debate is just as as bad as denying them their vote.

Opportunity to debate doesn't happen by itself; the rules must explicitly pause the process at points to give members a chance to exercise this right. The three-day rule we have now is not doing this job well enough.

8:

This seems pretty obvious, although there are finer points to this that somethimes get ignored. As a prime example, I posted before about how there are actually three options every time we see a new bill: we can pass it immediately, reject it immediately, or amend it. Calling an immediate vote assumes the answer to the question "should we improve this bill with amendments before we pass it" is no. But that question shouldn't be assumed, it should be voted on (and just like all votes, debate should be allowed beforehand).

9:

This is something that we have not had to deal with... yet. Anticipating what members might try to cheat on, and making rules against it could be good. To tell the truth, after seeing some ninja-editing shenanigans in Orion's legislature, I am worried about the potential for similar fraud to happen in our parliament. Reddit posts and comments are very easy to alter or delete. In theory I could edit any of the many Aytos laws I wrote this way. Timestamps show this type of editing, but if someone attempted this they could cause some chaos for a while before people noticed.

Maybe stating principle 9 as a rule, then allowing parliament to expel a member for fraud would be a good idea. This leaves it to an honorable majority in parliament to enforce these rules, which is all we can do. Also expelling a member will not seriously affect AFR government, since we have party lists to immediately draw replacement members from.

10:

This doesn't apply to us much. Parliament is sovereign in Aytos, and the Supreme Court is there to challenge unconstitutional laws.