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A closer look at Robert’s Rules allows us to say something about the history of rules and thus the historicity of forms.

Although the flat, Gideon Bible ubiquity of the book makes it seem inevitable or even natural, its style, its origins, its afterlife, and, indeed, its form are mixed up with the history of democracy in America in unexpectedly deep ways. That said, there are ways to read Robert’s Rules. Zimmerman dedicates her Robert’s Rules in Plain English “to everyone who has served as a member or leader of a group, and who has, at one time or another, felt ignorant, ineffectual, helpless, frustrated, repressed, or just plain bored.” 5 Whether as a cudgel wielded by others or as a means of making the best of an essentially bad situation, Robert’s Rules isn’t something that one reads for pleasure or, strictly speaking, something that one really reads at all.

De Vries in The New Robert’s Rules of Order, “are one of the few things in life that are pursued relentlessly even though they provoke endless complaints of frustration, stress, wasted hours, and dissatisfaction with the outcome.” 4 And Doris P. David, in his 1937 Robert’s Rules Simplified, acknowledges that for some, Robert’s rules look like “a ‘bag of tricks’ with which a few members can run things to suit themselves.” 2 In his Notes and Comments on Robert’s Rules, Jon Ericson acknowledges that, for many, “parliamentary procedure is that tricky, pedantic, officious, dull, boring, unfair system that tyrants use to suppress the rights of all us good folk.” 3 “Meetings,” says Mary A.

1 Its potential as both an effective tool and a bespoke weapon has long been a part of the book’s appeal. Sitting down at a committee table and placing an unopened, unread copy where others could see it is a power move all its own: an index of the paradoxically occult sway of ostensibly transparent procedure, a threat and a promise. Its talismanic power is such that an effective use of the book might not even require consultation. “If only you had looked at page 47 of Robert’s Rules,” we can hear someone saying, “you would have known that a Motion to Suppress the Question requires a two-thirds vote. Even in Robert’s own early editions, the guidance on secondary, subsidiary, incidental, privileged, unclassified, and other motions was presented in a pointedly systematic form that invited not slow perusal but rather tactical, and sometimes supercilious, consultation. Robert, Robert’s Rules of Order Revised (1915)ĭoes anyone read Robert’s Rules of Order? We often threaten to consult it, but it’s hard to imagine someone really reading any of the many versions of Henry Robert’s 1876 text. The Previous Question does not refer, as its name would imply, to the previous question.