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The Swiss Political System: More Than You Ever Wanted to Know

ORIGINAL POST
Preview:
"Swiss political system may be best known for its extensive use of referenda. However, others may argue that its most striking feature is the ability to avoid political polarization. In this respect it may be unique among the western nations.
That being said, it is hard to learn much about how it works. First, a big part of the system is informal and thus only discoverable by observing it personally or by asking the locals. Second, it's strongly decentralized. Different rules apply in different cantons and municipalities which makes the topic confusing to study. Third, Swiss aren't especially interested in promoting their own system abroad. A lot of the resources therefore exist only in local languages.
In this article I'll try to put together what I've learned by living in the country, speaking to local people, following local press and studying the resources.
Still, a disclaimer is due: I am not Swiss. I have lived here only for five years. Neither am I a political scientists or a sociologist. If you are Swiss, or simply know better than me, let me know about any inaccuracies in the article.
On the more technical side of things: There's a lot of material to cover, and the result may be rather overwhelming. It would be a small book rather than a long article. Therefore, I am going to split this essay into three or four installments which I will publish one at a time.

Semi-direct Democracy

When modern Switzerland was established in 1848, it was a pretty standard representative democracy, mostly based on the American model.
It's a federal state. Federal elections are held every four years. People are represented by political parties. There are two chambers of the parliament. Parliament elects members of the government, who then together run the country. The thriving ecosystem of various voluntary associations resembles the America that Alexis de Toqueville has written about.
However, Switzerland is special in that various elements of direct democracy were introduced in the course of history.
There are obligatory referenda: Any change in constitution, adjustment of taxes or joining any international organization must be approved by the people and the cantons. There are legislative referenda: Any law enacted by the parliament may be challenged and rejected in a referendum. Finally, there are so called "popular initiatives" which can propose a referendum on any topic. If the initiative manages to collect specified amount of signatures within specified amount of time the referendum is organized and the initiative may eventually get enacted. All of these referenda exist not only on the federal, but also on the cantonal and the municipal level. All of them are binding and neither of them needs a quorum.
To understand the scope of the thing, consider that a 37-year-old from the city of Zurich who turned 18 in year 2000, has, in past 20 years, had the opportunity to take part in 548 referenda, 181 of them being on the federal, 176 on the cantonal and 191 on the municipal level. With the average turnout of 45% it means that they have voted in approximately 246 referenda.
Due to their large number, individual referenda are not organized separately. Instead, they are voted on in batches, typically four times a year.
To get a flavor of how it feels like, here's the batch from the city of Zurich in February 2020:
The canton publishes a handbook for each ballot, which explains, in quite a lot of detail, including graphs, maps and tables, what each referendum is about. Take the Rosengarten tunnel project. The guide devotes eight pages to explain the project, including topics such as the impact on the traffic situation in the canton, the impact on the environment, or a detailed explanation of the financing of the project. It states that both the cantonal government and parliament recommend voting in favor of the proposal. It is followed by the opinion of the minority in the cantonal parliament, arguing that the costs are too high, that the financial contribution from the federal government is uncertain, and that the project doesn't really address the existing problem. They recommend to vote against. The next page contains the opinion of the parliament of the city of Zurich. They argue, in rather strong terms, against the project. Finally, there's the opinion of the referendum commission, which is, as one would expect, against the tunnel.
If even the election guide is not enough, you can have a look at the websites advocating for the yes and no vote, respectively. While the website against is relatively minimalist, the in favor side has a long list of supporters. In addition to almost all political parties, there's a long list of supportive associations: The Automobile Club, the Association for the Promotion of Public Transport, the Employers' Association, the Association of Construction Companies of Canton Schaffhausen, the Association of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, the Property Owners' Association, Swiss Travel Club, Zurich Chamber of Commerce and the like. Many of these organizations have also published their own assessment of the project.
As can be seen, the voters aren't exposed to a simple, black and white choice. Instead, they are drawn into a complex network of different preferences: Your party is in favor, but the deputies of your municipality are against. You are a member of the automobile club and the club is in favor. But your neighbors are against. Voting necessarily means understanding that things are never clear-cut.

Mandatory Referenda

Any change to the constitution must be approved by the voters in a referendum. There's no way around it. If you want to change the constitution, you need the majority of voters and the majority of cantons to vote for it. Period. (To clarify: Canton is considered to be in favor if the majority of voters in the canton are in favor.)
While this may seem as a reasonable rule on its own, it is in fact an important piece that complements the overall system. The results of popular initiatives are, for example, written into the constitution, meaning that they can't be overturned, except by a different referendum. (On the other hand, it gives the Swiss Constitution a rather special character. It begins with the thundering: "In the name of Almighty God! We, the Swiss people and cantons, mindful of our responsibility to the Creation" etc., but then it ends with guidelines for the protection of swamps and rules for building holiday homes.)
Similarly, Switzerland has no constitutional court. The right to interpret the constitution is granted only to the people. They may do so by running a referendum that makes the wording of the constitution more clear.
In short, the system is crafted in such a way that there are no loopholes. No way to disrespect the popular opinion.
In addition to the changes in constitution, referendum is also required to to join international organizations. This way, Switzerland decided not to enter the European Economic Area in 1992, to join Schengen area in 2005, not to join UN in 1986 and, again, to join UN in 2002. (And yes: Palace of Nations, the headquarters of UN, is located in Geneva and was located there for a long time even before Switzerland has become a member.)

Legislative Referenda

Legislative referenda get the least publicity but they may be the most important of all. Unlike constitutional referenda and public initiatives that tend to focus on big topics the legislative referendum can challenge and reject any law, no matter how trivial, passed by the parliament.
This keeps the parliament and the government in check on day-to-day basis. To quote Wikipedia:
The possibility for the citizens to challenge any law influences the whole political system. It encourages parties to form coalition governments, to minimize the risk that an important party tries to block the action of the government by systematically launching referendums. It gives legitimacy to political decisions. It forces the authorities to listen to all sectors of the population, to minimize the risk that they reject new laws in referendums. Before presenting a new bill to the parliament, the federal government usually makes a wide consultation to ensure that no significant group is frontally opposed to it, and willing to launch a referendum.
In short, legislative referenda are probably the single most important force that driving Switzerland away from the political polarization and towards the rule by consensus."
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The full article breaks the word limit. Just click that blue link why don't you?
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New Yorker March 30, 2020 book review: How Joseph Smith and the Early Mormons Challenged American Democracy

In Nauvoo, Illinois, Smith established a theocracy, ran for President, and tested the limits of religious freedom.
It was an unlikely candidacy: a thirty-eight-year-old mayor from the heartland who pitched himself as the solution to partisan gridlock, played up his military experience, talked often about his faith, and promised to end the country’s moral decline. He was fond of quoting the Founding Fathers, had an army of grassroots supporters, and came from a swing state. But the year was 1844, the state was Illinois, the parties were the Whigs and the Democrats, and the candidate was Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Whether or not the country would have been with Joe, we’ll never know: on June 27th, a few months after announcing his candidacy, the first Mormon to run for President became the first Presidential candidate to be assassinated. Smith’s death marked the end of a decisive period in Mormon history, one that is less familiar to most outsiders than the Church’s founding, in New York State, or its eventual move to Utah, where, against considerable odds, its members came to flourish. But the chaotic months of Smith’s Presidential campaign and his effort to establish a theocracy in Illinois are the subject of the historian Benjamin E. Park’s new book, "Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier"
Park’s book is a compelling history, built from contemporaneous accounts and from the previously unreleased minutes of the Council of Fifty, a governing body of sorts that Smith convened in Nauvoo, Illinois, when he was feeling besieged by his enemies and anticipating the Second Coming of Christ. Its minutes help clarify Smith’s sometimes contradictory political theology, and Park’s explication of them elevates “Kingdom of Nauvoo” from pure religious history to the realm of political theory. Park, an ambidextrous thinker, is equally sensitive to the danger the state can pose to religious minorities and to the danger that a religious institution can pose to the secular state. In his account, the early Mormons were a rowdy band of neo-Puritans who mounted a fundamental challenge to the democratic experiment. The tensions that they experienced—between the right to religious freedom and the limits of religious tolerance—still persist today.
Smith was twenty-one and a few years into a floundering career as a treasure hunter when, per his own account, he unearthed a set of golden plates buried in upstate New York. This was in 1827, during the Second Great Awakening, when charismatic preachers were stoking religious fires around the country. Smith’s parents had been drawn into this religious passion—especially his father, who dabbled in divination until his dreams were filled with prophecies. Smith’s own visions were of an angel named Moroni, who appeared to him several times before finally instructing him to retrieve the plates buried in Hill Cumorah. By then, Smith had married a woman named Emma Hale, who helped transcribe the words that Smith claimed to translate from the plates—engravings in a language that he called “reformed Egyptian.”
Smith finished the transcription by 1830 and found a printer who agreed to run off five thousand copies. The result, the Book of Mormon, begins as the record of a Jewish family in Jerusalem, who, around 600 B.C., build a boat and sail to the Americas—where, six centuries later, the risen Christ preaches to their descendants. In an age when people were hungry for evidence of God’s continued involvement in the world, and in a country anxious to assert itself on the global stage, Smith’s scriptures offered appealing assurances: not only was the United States a holy land where Jesus himself had walked but God was still speaking to the men and women who lived there. Smith attracted a circle of followers, mostly men of modest means—farmers, clerks, small-time pastors, and schoolteachers—from New York and Pennsylvania at first, then from farther afield.
But self-declared prophets seldom sit well with the political establishment, and, almost immediately, Smith and his adherents got into trouble with the law. Some of their antagonists were motivated by personal animus toward Smith dating to his pre-Prophet, huckstering, treasure-hunting days; others were dismayed by the unconventional nature of Mormonism, with its new scriptures, its occasional glossolalia, and its insistence that other churches had fallen away from Christ’s true gospel. It wasn’t long before Smith was arrested for being a “disorderly person,” one in a series of charges by various authorities attempting to stymie his religious movement: banking fraud, illegal banking, fornication, threatening a public official, conspiring to assassinate a public official, incitement of a riot, perjury, polygamy, and treason against two states.
As grave as some of those charges were, they were the least of the problems faced by members of the new faith. Anti-Mormon mobs harassed known believers and attacked their houses; they even tarred and feathered Smith one night in 1832. Hostilities like these gradually pushed the Mormons farther and farther toward the frontier: they established their first new Jerusalem in Kirtland, Ohio; then a newer new Jerusalem in Independence, Missouri; and their newest new Jerusalem in Far West, Missouri. In each place, local opposition increased in tandem with the growth of the Mormon population. It worsened when, at Smith’s command, Mormons voted as a bloc, upsetting the political order. In 1838, having already been evicted from one Missouri county, they went to vote in the county seat of another, where a mob attempted to stop them. There were allegations of violence in what came to be known as the Gallatin County Election Day Battle, and subsequent vigilantism left more than twenty people dead. During this period, the Missouri governor, Lilburn Boggs, declared in an executive order that “the Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the state if necessary for the public peace.” Three days later, seventeen Mormons were murdered by soldiers near Shoal Creek, in Caldwell County.
The next day, Smith was arrested and imprisoned for four months, during which time thousands of Mormon refugees moved to Illinois, where they had been promised protection by the state legislature, whose members included a young Abraham Lincoln. Smith escaped from jail before standing trial—possibly with the help of sympathetic guards—and he and other Mormon leaders then went to Washington, D.C., to plead their case before the federal government. Aggrieved but also entitled, they carried four hundred and eighty-one individual petitions for reparations from harm suffered in state-sanctioned violence, demanding compensation for everything from lost livestock to lost husbands. The largest of the claims came from Smith himself, who demanded a hundred thousand dollars for loss of property and what he described as false imprisonment.
Those petitions represented a peculiar understanding of American federalism: predictably, the Mormons got nowhere with their argument that the national government should compensate them for the actions of a particular state. “What can I do?” President Martin Van Buren asked incredulously, before giving the same answer that Congress offered when presented with the petitions: “I can do nothing for you.” It was the first of many contradictory lessons the Mormons would learn about how the federal government adjudicates between the will of the majority and the rights of a minority. Disillusioned and angered, Smith and the others headed back to Illinois, where the Mormons had already chosen a place to resettle. The town was called Commerce, so they bought it. Smith changed the name to Nauvoo, which he believed to be the Hebrew word for “beautiful city.”
The city of Nauvoo took shape in an age when Ralph Waldo Emerson claimed that every intellectual had “a draft of a new community in his waistcoat pocket.” But Smith’s plans went far beyond the scribbling stage: within a dozen years of its founding, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had more than twenty thousand members, and Nauvoo quickly grew to be more populous than Chicago. But, unlike the Windy City, Nauvoo, operating under a permissive charter from the state of Illinois, developed a distinctly theocratic character: its independent judiciary could deny the validity of arrest warrants issued by neighboring authorities in order to shield Church members from prosecution, and its standing militia of several hundred armed men, known as the Nauvoo Legion, was empowered to protect citizens from any threat. Smith was made a Lieutenant General, a title previously held in the United States only by George Washington, and organized parades to show off the legion’s strength. (This was the military experience he would boast about during his Presidential campaign; he later added to his résumé a term as Nauvoo’s mayor.)
The city’s grandest feature was its enormous tabernacle. Smith wanted the temple of Nauvoo to rival the one built by Solomon; when it was finished, thanks to the tithe in time and muscle required of every resident, it was twice as tall as the White House. Smith had continued to receive revelations about how the faithful were meant to serve God, so this new sanctuary housed new religious rituals. One of them called for posthumous baptism, through which Mormons could baptize a living person as a proxy for someone already deceased. Another—which would divide the Church, attract the permanent suspicion of the state, and forever taint the public perception of the faith—called for plural marriage.
The origins of this rite are not well known. As Park observes in “Kingdom of Nauvoo,” it is striking that a faith so devoted to record-keeping did not document the doctrine of polygamy. “As committed as he was to the ritual’s significance,” Park writes, of Smith, “he was similarly committed to its secrecy, knowing that its exposure would lead to Nauvoo’s downfall.” Smith publicly denied knowledge of polygamous marriages, and the few records of those unions which do exist refer to them as “sealings”—or, even more cryptically, simply connect the names of the united with “was,” an abbreviation for “wed and sealed.” One of the only documents Smith ever recorded which attests to the practice is a blessing he wrote for the family of one of his teen-age wives, assuring her and her relatives of their salvation. Another of Smith’s plural wives—whose marriage to Smith was followed, within a few weeks, by that of her sister—later explained that these marriages were “too sacred to be talked about.” Such furtiveness makes it difficult to track the development of the doctrine, much less Smith’s theological justification for it. Some historians, including Park, believe that he took his first plural wife in April, 1841, though whenever it happened, he did not tell Emma, and it was some time before she learned the truth. If he’d been elected President, the nation’s cumulative total of First Ladies would instantly have tripled: by then, he had taken more than thirty wives, the youngest of whom was thought to be fourteen, and the oldest of whom was fifty-six.
Originally, only Smith had multiple wives. But he gradually revealed the practice to other Mormon leaders, inviting them, selectively, to witness his plural marriages, then encouraging them to pursue their own. Not everyone approved: Smith’s brother Hyrum initially led the opposition, condemning polygamy and calling for a moral revival in Nauvoo. Hyrum was a widower, and his hostility to the practice weakened after he learned of its supposed posthumous benefits, through which he could be united in the afterlife with both his late wife and any future ones. Other Mormons remained unenthusiastic. Emma tried to marshal resistance among women through the Church’s all-female Relief Society; in response, Smith tried to stifle the organization. Emma then threatened him with divorce, at which point he promised to take no additional wives and signed his property over to her and their children, in order to secure their financial well-being in case of rival claims.
It would be years before any Mormon leader formally acknowledged the practice of polygamy. Instead, somewhat shockingly, the Nauvoo city council passed a law punishing adultery with six months in jail and a fine of up to a thousand dollars. (Because the city’s municipal leadership overlapped entirely with its spiritual leadership, Smith could choose to protect colleagues from prosecution under this new law.) Even more audaciously, Smith cursed “all Adulterers & fornicators” in a speech, then excommunicated two Church leaders for attempting to expose his secret marriages. The first, John C. Bennett, had been the mayor of Nauvoo; when his own polygamy became public, he accused Smith of having sanctioned it. The second, William Law, had denounced plural marriage after Smith propositioned his wife. After being banished from the faith, Law started a breakaway movement called the True Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
Such two-faced dealing was characteristic of Smith’s leadership during the Nauvoo years, both within and beyond the bounds of the Mormon Church. Not only was he struggling to maintain control of his followers—suppressing dissent over plural marriage and quashing concerns about his own moral purity—he was also trying to expand his secular power. Since arriving in Illinois, Smith had, ahead of every election, courted the favor of the two major political parties, the Whigs and the Democrats, dangling the Mormon vote in exchange for political favors and personal protection. In a state where a few hundred votes could determine the outcome of an election, particularly at the county and congressional levels, the thousands of active and enfranchised Mormons became a sought-after constituency. After a few election cycles, though, this courtship soured, partly because Smith did not reliably follow through on his promised endorsements; in one congressional race, he supported the Whig candidate while instructing other Church leaders to support the Democratic opponent, dividing the promised bloc vote. Moreover, he was becoming politically toxic. When Boggs, the Missouri governor, was shot, in 1842, rumors circulated that Smith had placed a bounty on his head. Missouri forced Illinois into an extradition arrangement for the Mormon leader, but the municipal courts in Nauvoo thwarted it, in a scandalous act of disregard for the rule of law.
Like the Quakers in the Massachusetts Bay Colony before them, and the Rajneeshees in Oregon after them, the Mormons in Illinois came to be seen as a danger to democracy: not a mini-America, where the saints could take refuge, but an anti-America, where social deviance threatened the moral order, and religious authorities sought too much power. In the case of the Mormons, that perception was not entirely inaccurate. This became clear in 2016, when the sealed minutes of the Council of Fifty were finally made public. Smith first convened the secret organization in the spring of 1844, and it immediately began drafting an alternative to the United States Constitution, rejecting democracy as a failed political project and outlining a theocratic kingdom to replace it.
Park’s access to these minutes is part of what makes “Kingdom of Nauvoo” so illuminating. The documents offer new insights into Smith’s decision to run for President, a campaign that exasperated authorities in Illinois and in Missouri and drew criticism of the Mormons from around the country. It was the Council of Fifty that appointed Smith “Prophet, Priest & King,” helping him shape a political platform while also making plans for what would happen if he lost the election and the Mormons needed to leave Nauvoo. The Council sent missionaries south and west, to see about resettlement, and Smith, in his Presidential platform, called for the annexation of Texas from Mexico, suggesting that the sale of the nation’s public lands could be used to buy the freedom of enslaved persons around the country, thereby ending slavery and promoting Manifest Destiny at the same time. (That suggests a stronger commitment to racial equality than existed. In the Book of Mormon, dark skin is depicted as a curse from God; after Smith’s death, the Church began withholding the priesthood from black members, a policy that lasted for much of the twentieth century.)
Smith had queried the five other Presidential candidates before deciding to run. Only three responded, and none expressed a willingness to protect the Mormons if elected. Smith’s ensuing campaign was not so much a vanity project as an attempt to advocate for a more assertive federal government and a stronger executive branch, making the case that the Union should intervene against the states whenever the rights of minorities were threatened. “Persecution has rolled upon our heads from time to time, from portions of the United States, like peals of thunder, because of our religion,” Smith lamented, after announcing his candidacy. “And no portion of the Government as yet has stepped forward for our relief. And in view of these things, I feel it to be my right and privilege to obtain what influence and power I can, lawfully, in the United States, for the protection of injured innocence.”
Nearly three hundred Mormon missionaries were sent into all twenty-six states to evangelize for Smith’s candidacy. Political conventions were just becoming popular, and his newly created Reform Party planned to hold them in every state—and to hold a national one in Baltimore later in the summer. But, not long before it was to take place, Smith was imprisoned in Illinois. The arrest stemmed not from forces outside Nauvoo but from forces within it: William Law, the excommunicated leader who founded a rival church, had, with a group of other dissenters, begun publishing a newspaper, which accused Smith of polygamy and detailed the ways in which he was supposedly dangerous to American democracy.
Smith and his Council of Fifty ordered the Nauvoo Legion to destroy the press that printed Law’s Nauvoo Expositor. Smith then declared martial law. The state of Illinois responded by threatening military retaliation against Nauvoo, and by adding a new charge to all the outstanding ones against Smith: attempting to incite a riot. Smith surrendered himself at Carthage, the county seat. Two days later, a mob of more than two hundred men stormed the jail where the Prophet was being held and shot him as he tried to escape by jumping from a second-story window. He died not long after hitting the ground, either from the fall or from the bullets the mob fired at him once he landed.
Only five of the vigilantes were tried for Smith’s murder, and none were convicted. Smith’s First Counselor and Vice-Presidential running mate, Sidney Rigdon, tried to take control of the Mormon Church; then Brigham Young, a former carpenter who’d been ordained to an advisory council called the Quorum of the Twelve, made the more politic suggestion that the whole Quorum should oversee the Church, with Young as its president; the congregation agreed. (The Council eventually excommunicated Rigdon, who later established a competing church, which condemned polygamy, in Pittsburgh.) Young was a forceful figure—“a man of much courage and superb equipment,” per the weathered stone that marks his birthplace, in Whitingham, Vermont. Ignoring the criticisms of the surrounding secular authorities, he began to “marry for eternity” more than a dozen women, seven of whom had also been “M.E.” to Smith, while also organizing the Mormon vote for county elections. The state retaliated by revoking Nauvoo’s charter, and the antagonism between the theocratic city and its surrounding democratic neighbors intensified until, finally, the Mormons were forced out of Nauvoo.
There was no reason to believe, at that point, that the Mormon Church would survive. Some supporters had proposed giving the religion its own sovereign reservation, like those that had recently been designated for Native Americans; opponents of the faith advocated, outright, for the extermination of its adherents. Park suggests that the Mormons’ migration to Utah was a preview of the sorts of secessionist tendencies that would play out two decades later, when Southern states left the Union, though the Mormons departed the country entirely—or tried to. When the faithful settled in the Salt Lake Valley, more than twelve hundred miles from Nauvoo, they were pleased to find themselves outside American territory, then displeased to discover, after the Mexican-American War, that their foreign soil was suddenly domestic. In yet another example of their continually complicated relationship to the United States, the Mormons almost immediately petitioned for statehood, trying to get federal recognition for the State of Deseret.
Nearly half a century later, Utah finally became a state, and the Mormons rejoined the Union—but not before they had mounted an armed resistance against the National Guard, in response to the American military entering the territory, in 1857. Five previous applications for statehood had been denied, on the ground that the Mormon Church’s political theology clashed with the country’s democratic values: the same conflict that had forced the Mormons out of Nauvoo was now playing out, over and over again, in their new home. Unlike the separatist Shakers and Mennonites, the Mormons wanted to participate in the democratic process, and they tried to consolidate enough political power to bend the laws of the majority to protect their minority beliefs. But polygamy, for the U.S. Congress, was a non-starter; eventually, judicial debates over its legality went all the way to the Supreme Court. In Reynolds v. U.S. (1879), the Justices ruled that the free-exercise clause did not protect plural marriage, and that a federal law banning polygamy was constitutional. Congress then passed more laws punishing the Church, including one that called for the seizure of its property. Finally, Mormon leaders, who had previously called for open defiance of federal laws, declared an end to plural marriage. Six years after this public capitulation, in 1896, Utah was recognized as the forty-fifth state.
Such compromises are the stuff that democracy is made of—and, it seems, the stuff that successful religions are made of, too. Many denominations came and went during the proliferation of faith and fanaticism that characterized the Second Great Awakening. What kept Mormonism from joining their ranks was its willingness to change its political theology. Park suggests that part of what the Mormons learned at Nauvoo was the limits of theocracy. Adapting their beliefs and practices in Utah strengthened their standing with the federal government; by balancing religious liberty with democratic authority, they survived persecution and persisted, eventually coming to play a significant role in the political life of the nation.
Although a Mormon was elected to state office in Illinois in 1838, it wasn’t until 1896 that one was elected to the federal legislature. That achievement did not end the suspicion on both sides of the church-state divide: when a member of the Quorum of the Twelve, Reed Smoot, won a United States Senate seat, in 1903, he endured several years of congressional inquiries into whether his duties as a Mormon apostle would keep him from exercising secular authority. Such was the uneasy evolution of the relationship between the faithful and their government: enmity and mistrust slowly gave way, on both sides, to accommodation and alliance. So it was that earlier this year, on the floor of the Senate, another onetime Mormon Presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, could declare that he had sworn “an oath before God to exercise impartial justice,” and become the first politician in American history to vote to impeach a member of his own party. In explaining why he would convict President Donald Trump on the charge of abuse of power, Romney said, “I am profoundly religious. My faith is at the heart of who I am.”
It was a remarkable gesture, the sort of profile in courage that so many people had been waiting for during the impeachment trial. It was also a vote to constrain the power of the executive branch, which Joseph Smith had wanted to strengthen, and to uphold traditional democratic principles, which Smith and his early followers had sought to undermine. And it was a vote at odds with some of Romney’s co-religionists in Congress: of the three other Mormons in the Senate, one, Tom Udall, a Democrat, joined Romney in voting for impeachment, while the other two, Mike Crapo and Mike Lee, both Republicans, voted to protect the President. That schism might have dismayed Smith: this time, there was no Mormon bloc. But, nearly two hundred years after the founding of Nauvoo, there was, within his faith, something that Smith had demanded from his country, even if he had not always permitted it in his church: room for dissent. ♦
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S. Res. 31: 122nd Senate Rules

122nd Senate Rules
Resolved by the United States Senate,
Rule I: President Pro Tempore
  1. The President Pro Tempore shall serve at the pleasure of the Senate.
  2. Upon the start of a new Congressional term, the Senate shall elect the President Pro Tempore by a vote of all Senators where a majority of all votes determines the winner.
  3. Upon a vacancy of the office of President Pro Tempore, there shall be a prompt election to elect the President Pro Tempore conducted in the same manner as Senate Rule I, 2.
  4. The President Pro Tempore may resign this position without resigning their Senate seat.
Rule II: Oaths
  1. The Oaths and Affirmations prescribed by the constitution and US law shall be taken by each Senator before entering upon their duties.
  2. Rule II, 1. of the Senate rules applies to all Senators, regardless of if they are entering for the first time, an incumbent returning, or appointed.
  3. The following Oaths have been prescribed by the Constitution and US Law "I, A__ B__, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God." (5 U.S.C. 3331.)
Rule III: Amendment of Rules
  1. No motion to suspend, modify, or amend any Senate rule, or any part thereof, shall be in order, except on two days’ notice specifying precisely the rule or part proposed to be suspended, modified, or amended, and the purpose thereof. Any rule may be suspended without notice by the unanimous consent of the Senate, except as otherwise provided in these rules.
  2. The rules of the Senate shall continue from one Congress to the next Congress unless they are changed as provided in these rules.
Rule IV: Quorum
  1. A quorum shall consist of a majority of the Senators duly chosen and sworn.
Rule V: Voting Procedure
  1. All voting periods (including amendment proposals) have a minimum length of 48 hours from their time of posting by the Senate Clerk.
  2. No voting period (including amendment proposals) shall exceed one week in length from their time of posting by the Senate Clerk.
  3. The Senate Majority Leader may lengthen any voting period (including amendment proposals) prior to the voting period beginning or during the voting period by informing the Senate Clerk.
  4. The Chairman of a Committee may lengthen any voting period (including amendment proposals) within their committee prior to the voting period beginning or during the voting period by informing the Senate Clerk.
  5. During a voting period, a Senator must vote either in the affirmative by commenting ‘yea’, in the unaffirmative by commenting ‘nay’, or may declare themselves present but not voting in either the affirmative or unaffirmative, by commenting ‘present’ or ‘abstain’.
                a. Amendments to bills in either committee or floor votes shall be                considered passed with a simple majority.
  1. No Senator shall delete or remove their vote, but a Senator may change their vote in a manner prescribed by the Senate Clerk
Rule VI: Docket
  1. No one shall submit legislation to the Senate who is not currently serving as a United States Senator. A Senator may sponsor legislation authored by a non-Senator which will allow it to be submitted to the Senate.
  2. Any Senator may submit a piece of legislation to the Senate in the manner prescribed by the Senate Clerk.
  3. Legislation shall be added to the Senate docket in the order in which it was submitted.
  4. The Senate Majority Leader may table any legislation (including treaties and nominations) by informing the Senate Clerk. The Senate Majority Leader may rush any legislation (including treaties) to an amendment proposal or Senate floor vote by informing the Senate Clerk. The Senate Majority Leader may rush a nomination to a Senate floor vote by informing the Senate Clerk. The Senate Majority Leader may alter the order of legislation (including treaties) on the docket by informing the Senate Clerk.
               a. A discharge petition, once ordered to the Senate Clerk, can be issued by                a simple majority vote of Senators to immediately put legislation before a                committee up to an amendment proposal or floor vote on the Senate floor.
               b. Legislation (including treaties and nominees) that has come up for an                amendment proposal, amendment vote, or Senate floor vote may no                longer be tabled.
  1. Legislation originating from the House of Representatives shall be treated the same as Senate legislation and all rules applying to Senate legislation shall apply to it as well.
Rule VII: Amendments
  1. No Senator shall propose an amendment in a committee (other than a technical, clerical, or conforming amendment) which contains any significant matter not within the jurisdiction of the committee where the amendment is being proposed.
Rule VIII: Reference to Committees
  1. In any case in which a controversy arises pursuant to a Chairman or Ranking Member exercising their authority under Senate Rule XI, 5 as to the jurisdiction of any committee with respect to any proposed legislation, the question of jurisdiction shall be decided by the President Pro Tempore, without debate, in favor of the committee which has jurisdiction over the subject matter which predominates in such proposed legislation; but such decision shall be subject to an appeal.
Rule IX: Committee Establishment
  1. There is established a Standing Committee on Veteran Affairs, Foreign Relations, and Armed Services, which shall have jurisdiction over measures relating to the following: the armed forces, foreign relations and treaties, homeland security and governmental affairs, issues of defense and war, and veteran affairs. This committee may be referred to as the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Armed Services.
  2. There is established a Standing Committee on Commerce, Finance, Labor, and Pensions, which shall have jurisdiction over measures relating to the following: appropriations and budgeting, revenue and government finance, banking, the currency, labor, interstate commerce, trade, pensions and Social Security, social welfare, small businesses, and education. This committee may be referred to as the Senate Committee on Finance.
  3. There is established a Standing Committee on Health, Science, and the Environment, which shall have jurisdiction over measures relating to the following: agriculture, nutrition, forestry, civil space matters, science, transportation, energy, natural resources, the environment and conservation, public works, public health, and healthcare. This committee may be referred to as the Senate Committee on The Environment and Healthcare.
  4. There is established a Standing Committee on Judiciary, Local Government, and Oversight, which shall have jurisdiction over measures relating to the following: local government, the Federal District, the judiciary, constitutional amendments, the impeachment of officials, government ethics, government oversight and accountability, and Senate rules and administration, and federal intelligence operations, and its oversight. This committee may be referred to as the Senate Committee on the Judiciary.
  5. If ⅓ of senators consent, a special committee may be created to address a particular concern.
Rule X: Selection of Committees
  1. Each standing committee shall be composed of five senators, with each senator serving on two different committees.
  2. Each Senator must caucus with either the Senate Majority Leader or the Senate Minority Leader for the purposes of committee selection.
  3. The Senate Majority Leader must assign three places on each committee.
  4. The Senate Minority Leader must assign two places on each committee
  5. The Senate Majority Leader will decide committee placements for individual Senators of their caucus.
  6. The Senate Minority Leader will decide committee placements for individual Senators of their caucus.
  7. Where, due to the size of a caucus, it is required that the opposing caucus leader must select committees for a member of their opposing caucus they must respect the choices of the opposing caucus leader except where it conflicts with their own committee selections.
  8. The Majority Leader shall select the Chairman of each committee.
  9. The Minority Leader shall select the Ranking Member of each committee.
  10. Upon the vacancy of a committee Chairmanship, the Majority Leader shall select one member of that committee to become Chairman.
  11. Upon the vacancy of a committee Ranking Membership, the Minority Leader shall select one member of that committee to become Ranking Member.
  12. Committees shall be completely re-established in accordance with Senate Rule X upon any successful recaucusing of the Senate Majority Leader.
  13. The Senate may create and abolish committees, reform their jurisdictions, or change the leadership and membership on any or all committees by a Senate Resolution passed by a majority of the Senate.
  14. Senators which replace other Senators shall take that Senator’s committee assignments, but not their positions of either Chairman or Ranking Member.
Rule XI: Committee Proceedings
  1. A majority of the members of a committee shall constitute a quorum of that committee.
  2. Committees shall have the power to amend legislation within their committee, to deem a measure fit for consideration on the Senate floor, to deem a measure unfit for consideration on the Senate floor, to report measures to the Senate floor, and to subpoena individuals for questioning on various measures and events before the committee in accordance with Senate Rule XII.
  3. Committees shall wield these powers by a simple majority of a quorum except with regards to hearings as the committee will establish their own rules in accordance with Senate Rule XII.
  4. While legislation (including treaties) is on the docket, the Senate Majority Leader may contact the Senate Clerk to inform them as to which committee, if any, the legislation should be assigned to. Otherwise, the Senate Clerk shall send legislation to an appropriate committee.
  5. Where the Chairman or Ranking Member of another committee objects to the Senate Clerk’s determination of an appropriate committee to send legislation, the dispute shall be resolved with reference to Senate Rule VIII.
  6. Legislation may proceed to the Senate floor without first being referred to a committee by the Senate Majority Leader informing the Senate Clerk or consent of ⅔ of the Senate.
  7. Each Senate confirmation shall be sent to the appropriate committee, as determined by Appendix A, for a committee vote before being reported to the Senate floor, unless otherwise prescribed by the Senate Majority Leader or a petition of ⅔ majority of the Senate.
  8. There shall be a binding vote on that nominee where a majority of the committee in favor shall approve the nominee for a report to the Senate floor. Should a majority of the committee not be in favor the committee shall not approve the nominee for a report to the Senate floor.
  9. The Chairman may prescribe that a private committee hearing with the nominee, not exceeding one week, precede the vote on the nominee by informing the Senate Clerk.
  10. The Chairman of each committee may send legislation not currently in amendment proposal or amendment votes in their committees straight to a committee vote by informing the Senate Clerk.
Rule XII: Hearing Authorization; Committee Rules
  1. Each standing committee is authorized to hold such hearings, to require by subpoena or otherwise the attendance of such witnesses and the production of such correspondence, books, papers, and documents, to take such testimony. Each such committee may make investigations into any matter within its jurisdiction, may report such hearings as may be had by it.
  2. Each committee shall adopt rules by majority vote (not inconsistent with the Rules of the Senate) governing the procedure of such committee with regards to hearings and the issuance of subpoenas.
Rule XIII: Election of Majority and Minority Leaders
  1. Upon the start of a new Congressional term, the Senate shall hold an election for the office of Senate Majority Leader by a vote of all Senators where the candidate receiving the most votes is the winner. The runner-up becomes Senate Minority Leader, but if there are multiple runners-up gaining the same number of votes, the Vice President shall decide the Senate Minority Leader, but the Senate Minority Leader must be from a different party as the Senate Majority Leader.
  2. If there are two or more candidates, and all receive the same number of votes, the Vice President shall decide who becomes Senate Majority Leader.
  3. If there are more than two candidates, and the candidates who have received the most votes have also received the same number of votes, the candidate(s) receiving the lowest number of votes shall be eliminated and another ballot of the remaining candidates shall be held.
  4. If there is one candidate, the Senate Majority Leader shall select a senator from another party to be Senate Minority Leader.
  5. A re-caucus for the positions of Senate Majority Leader and Senate Minority Leader can be issued by both the Senate Majority Leader and Senate Minority Leader informing the Senate Clerk, or by a majority resolution.
  6. Should the office of Senate Majority Leader become vacant the Senate shall hold an election to determine a new Senate Majority Leader in accordance with Senate Rule XIII; this includes a new Senate Minority Leader.
  7. Should the office of Senate Minority Leader become vacant the minority caucus shall select a new Senate Minority Leader. If the minority caucus cannot decide on a new Senate Minority Leader, the Senate Majority Leader shall select a member of the minority caucus to be the Senate Minority Leader.
  8. The Senate Majority Leader or Senate Minority Leader may resign these positions without resigning their Senate seat.
Rule XIV: Poison Pill Amendments
  1. No member shall submit any amendment which strikes all significant portions (where significant portion is taken to mean all sections, excluding any definitions, short title, or other procedural section) of a part of legislation, which strikes the enacting clause or amends the enacting clause to a date further than ten years beyond the implementation date of the legislation, or otherwise significantly delays the enactment of the legislation beyond what is just and reasonable, which significantly negates the purpose of the legislation, which strikes particular tenses, letters, or other grammatical functions to make the legislation incoherent, which adds non-germane and/or absurd sections to the legislation to ensure its failure, or which generally alters the language of the legislation in a manner unduly severe or contrary to the original purpose of the legislation.
  2. This rule shall be interpreted and enforced by the Chairman of a Committee within their committee and by the Senate Majority Leader outside of committees, and members in violation may be appropriately sanctioned.
Rule XV: Secret Sessions
  1. The Senate, by majority vote, may hold a secret session for no longer than seventy-two hours and may be extended by three days by majority vote. No records shall be kept during this time.
Rule XVI: Senate Chamber
  1. The Senate Chamber shall not be granted for any other purpose than for the use of the Senate; no smoking shall be permitted at any time on the floor of the Senate, or lighted cigars, cigarettes, e-cigarettes or pipes be brought into the Chamber. It shall be the duty of the Committee on Judiciary, Local Government, and Oversight to make all rules and regulations respecting such parts of the Capitol, its passages and galleries, including the restaurant and the Senate Office Buildings, as are or may be set apart for the use of the Senate and its officers, to be enforced under the direction of the Presiding Officer. The Committee shall make such regulations respecting the reporters' galleries of the Senate, together with the adjoining rooms and facilities, as will confine their occupancy and use to bona fide reporters of newspapers and periodicals, and of news or press associations for daily news dissemination through radio, television, wires, and cables, and similar media of transmission. These regulations shall so provide for the use of such space and facilities as fairly to distribute their use to all such media of news dissemination.
  2. The Senate Majority Leader may open a weekly speech thread within the Senate where Senators may comment on any matter they choose while still respecting the rules and decorum of the Senate.
Rule XVII: Usage of Senate Rules
  1. Any power a Senator, Chairman, Senate Majority Leader, Senate Minority Leader, President Pro-Tempore, or the President of the Senate is granted within these rules, that is not pertinent to normal Senate business, must be made as a comment on the appropriate thread while pinging the Senate Clerk.
  2. In the event of an ambiguity or contradiction within the Senate Rules, the President Pro Tempore may issue an interpretation of the Senate Rules that solves the problem. The President Pro Tempore has final jurisdiction over interpretation of the Senate Rules.
Rule XVIII: Senate Filibusters
  1. A filibuster is the process whereby a Senator holds the Senate floor in an attempt to prevent a piece of legislation (including treaties and nominations) from progressing.
  2. Any Senator may begin a filibuster by commenting in the appropriate thread designated by the Senate Clerk with the phrase “I am starting a filibuster on [Legislation Title]” and pinging the Senate Clerk.
  3. Legislation Title shall refer to the type and number of a bill or be clear beyond a reasonable doubt when opening a filibuster on a treaty or nomination.
  4. A filibuster on legislation may only be started during amendment proposals or amendment votes. A filibuster on treaties and nominations may be started during amendment proposals or amendment votes, if applicable, and during Senate floor votes, respectively.
  5. If, due to action by the Senate Majority Leader legislation (including treaties or nominations) has no amendment proposal phase or amendment vote phase then a filibuster may be started only within 48 hours of the original posting of the legislation’s (including treaties and nominations) floor vote phase.
  6. Once a filibuster has been started, the Senator must comment on the amendment proposal, amendment vote, or Senate floor vote thread indicating beyond a reasonable doubt that they are filibustering.
  7. Once a Senator has commented in accordance with Senate Rule XVIII, 6. the legislation (including treaties and nominations) will not proceed out of its current phase until the filibustering Senator comments that the filibuster is over or at least 6 Senators comment on the filibustering Senator’s comment indicating they are ending the filibuster. Ending a filibuster in this manner ends all currently active filibusters on the legislation (including treaties and nominations).
  8. Once a filibuster has been ended in accordance with Senate Rule XVIII, 7. The legislation (including treaties and nominations) will proceed to the next legislative phase unless the filibuster was ended within 48 hours from the original posting of the legislation (including treaties and nominations) in which case the phase remains open for all usual action including another filibuster.
  9. No Senator may initiate a filibuster on any legislation (including treaties and nominations) more than once.
  10. No Senator may have more than three filibusters ongoing at one time.
  11. A filibuster does not prevent any Senator from taking action they normally would be able to on legislation (including treaties and nominations) including, but not limited to, voting, proposing amendments, and voting on amendments.
  12. The Senate Clerk must verify that active filibusters have not been ended at least once a week or upon request of the Senate Majority Leader or Senate Minority Leader.
  13. The Senate Majority Leader and Senate Minority Leader, if in agreement, may end a filibuster immediately by commenting in the manner prescribed in Senate Rule XVIII, 7.
Rule XIX: Upholding the Constitution Amendment
  1. All legislation submitted to and originating from the Senate must include a section citing the main constitutional basis, or basises for the provisions of the legislation. Should the President Pro Tempore, the Majority Leader, and the Minority Leader all agree that the legislation involved does not include such a basis, the legislation shall be struck from the docket
Rule XX: Determining Senate Seniority
  1. The Seniority date of each Senator is calculated in the first instance as the date on which the Oath in Rule II is taken by the Senator that began their current, continuous service in the Senate. Those Senators taking the Oath earlier are more senior than Senators taking the Oath later. For the purposes of this rule, only the calendar day and year are considered and not hours, minutes, seconds, or any smaller denomination of time.
  2. In the event that two or more Senators took the Oath in Rule II on the same date the more senior is the Senator whose state they represent entered the Union earlier.
  3. In the event that two or more Senators took the Oath in Rule II on the same date and the state they represent entered the Union on the same date the more senior is the Senator who has a longer length of service in the positions described in Appendix B based on hierarchy. Any amount of service in a higher office will make that Senator more senior than a longer length of service in a lower office.
Appendix A
Standing Committee on Commerce, Finance, and Labor 1. Secretary of the Treasury
Standing Committee on Health, Science, and the Environment 1. Secretary of Health and Human Services 2. Secretary of the Interior
Standing Committee on Judiciary, Local Government, and Oversight 1. Attorney General 2. Supreme Court Justices
Standing Committee on Veteran Affairs, Foreign Relations, and Armed Services 1. Secretary of State 2. Secretary of Defense
Appendix B
  1. Former senator
  2. Former vice president
  3. Former House member
  4. Former Cabinet secretary
  5. Former state governor
  6. Population of state based on the most recent census when the senator took office
submitted by GuiltyAir to ModelUSSenate [link] [comments]

[EVENT] First Draft of the New Constitution

The unification of the CoD and RoF, though expected by many experts, came out of the blue for most people in both countries. The biggest debate at the moment of course, is the governance of the country. Though the Presidents promised a government based on state rights, many are already confused as to how a representative democracy as well as a state-based democracy can be properly be formed with one of the six states having as much population as the other five combined. Today the legislators from both countries will be announcing the proposed governmental structure and constitution of the new nation, as well as its name and flag

Constitution of the Commonwealth of Six

The Commonwealth of Six is the result of weeks of hard work and research by political experts in both the Deep South and Florida. The final decision was what the legislators thought was a satisfactory compromise

Executive

The Executive Office of the Commonwealth will be a President, who will be elected by majority votes, instead of a rough replica of the US Electoral College. The President will serve a similar role as he did in the former US, with identical powers and responsibilities. The decision to follow majority votes is to avoid inner-state division and to ensure proper representation of all camps, instead of the states with more population in one camp dominating, which means only one half of the biggest state can decide the results. The majority system put the debate between demographics lines instead of state lines

Legislative

The Legislature is no longer controlled by party-listed parliaments or senates. Instead the Senate will be replaced by the National Founding League, who will be able to draft federal legislatures and vote on budgets. The NFL will consist of 32 "Teams", who will each have 45 seats. Each year, the teams can draft new League Member (LM) from a list of certified non-league politicians (CNLP). Anyone above the age of 30 can sign up to be on the CNLP list and potentially be drafted (political past an advantage). After 4 years in a team, LMs become "free agents" and can be drafted by other teams. NFL elections will be held every March to determine who gets to draft first in the April Draft, though the number of seats each team owns remain fixed. Every draft, each team has a pick, and get an extra pick for every LM leaving them on free agent. Then every 2 years a nation-wide vote will determine the "stats" of each LM, based on popularity, determining the amount of votes they have in the NFL, which can range from 1 to 100.
States can have their own legislative branch which determines state laws. As long as they don't directly contradict federal laws or the Constitution, the State Courts have untouchable right of ruling cases under state laws without interference from the government.

Cabinet

The President will have a cabinet to help him carry out laws, including a VP and the heads of the Executive Departments

Judicial

The Judicial branch of the government is made up of the Supreme Courts and State Courts.
The Supreme Court is the highest court in the Commonwealth of Six. The Justices of the Supreme Court are nominated by the president and must be approved by the Senate.
The Constitution gives the NFL the authority to establish other federal courts to handle cases that involve federal laws including tax and bankruptcy, lawsuits involving U.S. and state governments or the Constitution, and more. Other federal judicial agencies and programs support the courts and research judicial policy.
​
Roll:
Critical fail (1): The constitution meets severe opposition and must be drafted from the start. The arguments and debates would last another year
Major fail (2-5): The constitution meets severe opposition and must be drafted from the start.
Minor fail(6-9): The constitution had to go through several fixes before being approved by referendum
10: The constitution was passed in a close referendum
Minor Success (11-16): The constitution was passed in a comfortable referendum win
Major success (17-20): The constitution was passed in a landslide referendum win
submitted by GamynTheRed to worldpowers [link] [comments]

S. Res. 31: 122nd Senate Rules

122nd Senate Rules
Resolved by the United States Senate,
Rule I: President Pro Tempore
  1. The President Pro Tempore shall serve at the pleasure of the Senate.
  2. Upon the start of a new Congressional term, the Senate shall elect the President Pro Tempore by a vote of all Senators where a majority of all votes determines the winner.
  3. Upon a vacancy of the office of President Pro Tempore, there shall be a prompt election to elect the President Pro Tempore conducted in the same manner as Senate Rule I, 2.
  4. The President Pro Tempore may resign this position without resigning their Senate seat.
Rule II: Oaths
  1. The Oaths and Affirmations prescribed by the constitution and US law shall be taken by each Senator before entering upon their duties.
  2. Rule II, 1. of the Senate rules applies to all Senators, regardless of if they are entering for the first time, an incumbent returning, or appointed.
  3. The following Oaths have been prescribed by the Constitution and US Law "I, A__ B__, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God." (5 U.S.C. 3331.)
Rule III: Amendment of Rules
  1. No motion to suspend, modify, or amend any Senate rule, or any part thereof, shall be in order, except on two days’ notice specifying precisely the rule or part proposed to be suspended, modified, or amended, and the purpose thereof. Any rule may be suspended without notice by the unanimous consent of the Senate, except as otherwise provided in these rules.
  2. The rules of the Senate shall continue from one Congress to the next Congress unless they are changed as provided in these rules.
Rule IV: Quorum
  1. A quorum shall consist of a majority of the Senators duly chosen and sworn.
Rule V: Voting Procedure
  1. All voting periods (including amendment proposals) have a minimum length of 48 hours from their time of posting by the Senate Clerk.
  2. No voting period (including amendment proposals) shall exceed one week in length from their time of posting by the Senate Clerk.
  3. The Senate Majority Leader may lengthen any voting period (including amendment proposals) prior to the voting period beginning or during the voting period by informing the Senate Clerk.
  4. The Chairman of a Committee may lengthen any voting period (including amendment proposals) within their committee prior to the voting period beginning or during the voting period by informing the Senate Clerk.
  5. During a voting period, a Senator must vote either in the affirmative by commenting ‘yea’, in the unaffirmative by commenting ‘nay’, or may declare themselves present but not voting in either the affirmative or unaffirmative, by commenting ‘present’ or ‘abstain’.
                a. Amendments to bills in either committee or floor votes shall be                considered passed with a simple majority.
  1. No Senator shall delete or remove their vote, but a Senator may change their vote in a manner prescribed by the Senate Clerk
Rule VI: Docket
  1. No one shall submit legislation to the Senate who is not currently serving as a United States Senator. A Senator may sponsor legislation authored by a non-Senator which will allow it to be submitted to the Senate.
  2. Any Senator may submit a piece of legislation to the Senate in the manner prescribed by the Senate Clerk.
  3. Legislation shall be added to the Senate docket in the order in which it was submitted.
  4. The Senate Majority Leader may table any legislation (including treaties and nominations) by informing the Senate Clerk. The Senate Majority Leader may rush any legislation (including treaties) to an amendment proposal or Senate floor vote by informing the Senate Clerk. The Senate Majority Leader may rush a nomination to a Senate floor vote by informing the Senate Clerk. The Senate Majority Leader may alter the order of legislation (including treaties) on the docket by informing the Senate Clerk.
               a. A discharge petition, once ordered to the Senate Clerk, can be issued by                a simple majority vote of Senators to immediately put legislation before a                committee up to an amendment proposal or floor vote on the Senate floor.
               b. Legislation (including treaties and nominees) that has come up for an                amendment proposal, amendment vote, or Senate floor vote may no                longer be tabled.
  1. Legislation originating from the House of Representatives shall be treated the same as Senate legislation and all rules applying to Senate legislation shall apply to it as well.
Rule VII: Amendments
  1. No Senator shall propose an amendment in a committee (other than a technical, clerical, or conforming amendment) which contains any significant matter not within the jurisdiction of the committee where the amendment is being proposed.
Rule VIII: Reference to Committees
  1. In any case in which a controversy arises pursuant to a Chairman or Ranking Member exercising their authority under Senate Rule XI, 5 as to the jurisdiction of any committee with respect to any proposed legislation, the question of jurisdiction shall be decided by the President Pro Tempore, without debate, in favor of the committee which has jurisdiction over the subject matter which predominates in such proposed legislation; but such decision shall be subject to an appeal.
Rule IX: Committee Establishment
  1. There is established a Standing Committee on Veteran Affairs, Foreign Relations, and Armed Services, which shall have jurisdiction over measures relating to the following: the armed forces, foreign relations and treaties, homeland security and governmental affairs, issues of defense and war, and veteran affairs. This committee may be referred to as the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Armed Services.
  2. There is established a Standing Committee on Commerce, Finance, Labor, and Pensions, which shall have jurisdiction over measures relating to the following: appropriations and budgeting, revenue and government finance, banking, the currency, labor, interstate commerce, trade, pensions and Social Security, social welfare, small businesses, and education. This committee may be referred to as the Senate Committee on Finance.
  3. There is established a Standing Committee on Health, Science, and the Environment, which shall have jurisdiction over measures relating to the following: agriculture, nutrition, forestry, civil space matters, science, transportation, energy, natural resources, the environment and conservation, public works, public health, and healthcare. This committee may be referred to as the Senate Committee on The Environment and Healthcare.
  4. There is established a Standing Committee on Judiciary, Local Government, and Oversight, which shall have jurisdiction over measures relating to the following: local government, the Federal District, the judiciary, constitutional amendments, the impeachment of officials, government ethics, government oversight and accountability, and Senate rules and administration, and federal intelligence operations, and its oversight. This committee may be referred to as the Senate Committee on the Judiciary.
  5. If ⅓ of senators consent, a special committee may be created to address a particular concern.
Rule X: Selection of Committees
  1. Each standing committee shall be composed of five senators, with each senator serving on two different committees.
  2. Each Senator must caucus with either the Senate Majority Leader or the Senate Minority Leader for the purposes of committee selection.
  3. The Senate Majority Leader must assign three places on each committee.
  4. The Senate Minority Leader must assign two places on each committee
  5. The Senate Majority Leader will decide committee placements for individual Senators of their caucus.
  6. The Senate Minority Leader will decide committee placements for individual Senators of their caucus.
  7. Where, due to the size of a caucus, it is required that the opposing caucus leader must select committees for a member of their opposing caucus they must respect the choices of the opposing caucus leader except where it conflicts with their own committee selections.
  8. The Majority Leader shall select the Chairman of each committee.
  9. The Minority Leader shall select the Ranking Member of each committee.
  10. Upon the vacancy of a committee Chairmanship, the Majority Leader shall select one member of that committee to become Chairman.
  11. Upon the vacancy of a committee Ranking Membership, the Minority Leader shall select one member of that committee to become Ranking Member.
  12. Committees shall be completely re-established in accordance with Senate Rule X upon any successful recaucusing of the Senate Majority Leader.
  13. The Senate may create and abolish committees, reform their jurisdictions, or change the leadership and membership on any or all committees by a Senate Resolution passed by a majority of the Senate.
  14. Senators which replace other Senators shall take that Senator’s committee assignments, but not their positions of either Chairman or Ranking Member.
Rule XI: Committee Proceedings
  1. A majority of the members of a committee shall constitute a quorum of that committee.
  2. Committees shall have the power to amend legislation within their committee, to deem a measure fit for consideration on the Senate floor, to deem a measure unfit for consideration on the Senate floor, to report measures to the Senate floor, and to subpoena individuals for questioning on various measures and events before the committee in accordance with Senate Rule XII.
  3. Committees shall wield these powers by a simple majority of a quorum except with regards to hearings as the committee will establish their own rules in accordance with Senate Rule XII.
  4. While legislation (including treaties) is on the docket, the Senate Majority Leader may contact the Senate Clerk to inform them as to which committee, if any, the legislation should be assigned to. Otherwise, the Senate Clerk shall send legislation to an appropriate committee.
  5. Where the Chairman or Ranking Member of another committee objects to the Senate Clerk’s determination of an appropriate committee to send legislation, the dispute shall be resolved with reference to Senate Rule VIII.
  6. Legislation may proceed to the Senate floor without first being referred to a committee by the Senate Majority Leader informing the Senate Clerk or consent of ⅔ of the Senate.
  7. Each Senate confirmation shall be sent to the appropriate committee, as determined by Appendix A, for a committee vote before being reported to the Senate floor, unless otherwise prescribed by the Senate Majority Leader or a petition of ⅔ majority of the Senate.
  8. There shall be a binding vote on that nominee where a majority of the committee in favor shall approve the nominee for a report to the Senate floor. Should a majority of the committee not be in favor the committee shall not approve the nominee for a report to the Senate floor.
  9. The Chairman may prescribe that a private committee hearing with the nominee, not exceeding one week, precede the vote on the nominee by informing the Senate Clerk.
  10. The Chairman of each committee may send legislation not currently in amendment proposal or amendment votes in their committees straight to a committee vote by informing the Senate Clerk.
Rule XII: Hearing Authorization; Committee Rules
  1. Each standing committee is authorized to hold such hearings, to require by subpoena or otherwise the attendance of such witnesses and the production of such correspondence, books, papers, and documents, to take such testimony. Each such committee may make investigations into any matter within its jurisdiction, may report such hearings as may be had by it.
  2. Each committee shall adopt rules by majority vote (not inconsistent with the Rules of the Senate) governing the procedure of such committee with regards to hearings and the issuance of subpoenas.
Rule XIII: Election of Majority and Minority Leaders
  1. Upon the start of a new Congressional term, the Senate shall hold an election for the office of Senate Majority Leader by a vote of all Senators where the candidate receiving the most votes is the winner. The runner-up becomes Senate Minority Leader, but if there are multiple runners-up gaining the same number of votes, the Vice President shall decide the Senate Minority Leader, but the Senate Minority Leader must be from a different party as the Senate Majority Leader.
  2. If there are two or more candidates, and all receive the same number of votes, the Vice President shall decide who becomes Senate Majority Leader.
  3. If there are more than two candidates, and the candidates who have received the most votes have also received the same number of votes, the candidate(s) receiving the lowest number of votes shall be eliminated and another ballot of the remaining candidates shall be held.
  4. If there is one candidate, the Senate Majority Leader shall select a senator from another party to be Senate Minority Leader.
  5. A re-caucus for the positions of Senate Majority Leader and Senate Minority Leader can be issued by both the Senate Majority Leader and Senate Minority Leader informing the Senate Clerk, or by a majority resolution.
  6. Should the office of Senate Majority Leader become vacant the Senate shall hold an election to determine a new Senate Majority Leader in accordance with Senate Rule XIII; this includes a new Senate Minority Leader.
  7. Should the office of Senate Minority Leader become vacant the minority caucus shall select a new Senate Minority Leader. If the minority caucus cannot decide on a new Senate Minority Leader, the Senate Majority Leader shall select a member of the minority caucus to be the Senate Minority Leader.
  8. The Senate Majority Leader or Senate Minority Leader may resign these positions without resigning their Senate seat.
Rule XIV: Poison Pill Amendments
  1. No member shall submit any amendment which strikes all significant portions (where significant portion is taken to mean all sections, excluding any definitions, short title, or other procedural section) of a part of legislation, which strikes the enacting clause or amends the enacting clause to a date further than ten years beyond the implementation date of the legislation, or otherwise significantly delays the enactment of the legislation beyond what is just and reasonable, which significantly negates the purpose of the legislation, which strikes particular tenses, letters, or other grammatical functions to make the legislation incoherent, which adds non-germane and/or absurd sections to the legislation to ensure its failure, or which generally alters the language of the legislation in a manner unduly severe or contrary to the original purpose of the legislation.
  2. This rule shall be interpreted and enforced by the Chairman of a Committee within their committee and by the Senate Majority Leader outside of committees, and members in violation may be appropriately sanctioned.
Rule XV: Secret Sessions
  1. The Senate, by majority vote, may hold a secret session for no longer than seventy-two hours and may be extended by three days by majority vote. No records shall be kept during this time.
Rule XVI: Senate Chamber
  1. The Senate Chamber shall not be granted for any other purpose than for the use of the Senate; no smoking shall be permitted at any time on the floor of the Senate, or lighted cigars, cigarettes, e-cigarettes or pipes be brought into the Chamber. It shall be the duty of the Committee on Judiciary, Local Government, and Oversight to make all rules and regulations respecting such parts of the Capitol, its passages and galleries, including the restaurant and the Senate Office Buildings, as are or may be set apart for the use of the Senate and its officers, to be enforced under the direction of the Presiding Officer. The Committee shall make such regulations respecting the reporters' galleries of the Senate, together with the adjoining rooms and facilities, as will confine their occupancy and use to bona fide reporters of newspapers and periodicals, and of news or press associations for daily news dissemination through radio, television, wires, and cables, and similar media of transmission. These regulations shall so provide for the use of such space and facilities as fairly to distribute their use to all such media of news dissemination.
  2. The Senate Majority Leader may open a weekly speech thread within the Senate where Senators may comment on any matter they choose while still respecting the rules and decorum of the Senate.
Rule XVII: Usage of Senate Rules
  1. Any power a Senator, Chairman, Senate Majority Leader, Senate Minority Leader, President Pro-Tempore, or the President of the Senate is granted within these rules, that is not pertinent to normal Senate business, must be made as a comment on the appropriate thread while pinging the Senate Clerk.
  2. In the event of an ambiguity or contradiction within the Senate Rules, the President Pro Tempore may issue an interpretation of the Senate Rules that solves the problem. The President Pro Tempore has final jurisdiction over interpretation of the Senate Rules.
Rule XVIII: Senate Filibusters
  1. A filibuster is the process whereby a Senator holds the Senate floor in an attempt to prevent a piece of legislation (including treaties and nominations) from progressing.
  2. Any Senator may begin a filibuster by commenting in the appropriate thread designated by the Senate Clerk with the phrase “I am starting a filibuster on [Legislation Title]” and pinging the Senate Clerk.
  3. Legislation Title shall refer to the type and number of a bill or be clear beyond a reasonable doubt when opening a filibuster on a treaty or nomination.
  4. A filibuster on legislation may only be started during amendment proposals or amendment votes. A filibuster on treaties and nominations may be started during amendment proposals or amendment votes, if applicable, and during Senate floor votes, respectively.
  5. If, due to action by the Senate Majority Leader legislation (including treaties or nominations) has no amendment proposal phase or amendment vote phase then a filibuster may be started only within 48 hours of the original posting of the legislation’s (including treaties and nominations) floor vote phase.
  6. Once a filibuster has been started, the Senator must comment on the amendment proposal, amendment vote, or Senate floor vote thread indicating beyond a reasonable doubt that they are filibustering.
  7. Once a Senator has commented in accordance with Senate Rule XVIII, 6. the legislation (including treaties and nominations) will not proceed out of its current phase until the filibustering Senator comments that the filibuster is over or at least 6 Senators comment on the filibustering Senator’s comment indicating they are ending the filibuster. Ending a filibuster in this manner ends all currently active filibusters on the legislation (including treaties and nominations).
  8. Once a filibuster has been ended in accordance with Senate Rule XVIII, 7. The legislation (including treaties and nominations) will proceed to the next legislative phase unless the filibuster was ended within 48 hours from the original posting of the legislation (including treaties and nominations) in which case the phase remains open for all usual action including another filibuster.
  9. No Senator may initiate a filibuster on any legislation (including treaties and nominations) more than once.
  10. No Senator may have more than three filibusters ongoing at one time.
  11. A filibuster does not prevent any Senator from taking action they normally would be able to on legislation (including treaties and nominations) including, but not limited to, voting, proposing amendments, and voting on amendments.
  12. The Senate Clerk must verify that active filibusters have not been ended at least once a week or upon request of the Senate Majority Leader or Senate Minority Leader.
  13. The Senate Majority Leader and Senate Minority Leader, if in agreement, may end a filibuster immediately by commenting in the manner prescribed in Senate Rule XVIII, 7.
Rule XIX: Upholding the Constitution Amendment
  1. All legislation submitted to and originating from the Senate must include a section citing the main constitutional basis, or basises for the provisions of the legislation. Should the President Pro Tempore, the Majority Leader, and the Minority Leader all agree that the legislation involved does not include such a basis, the legislation shall be struck from the docket
Rule XX: Determining Senate Seniority
  1. The Seniority date of each Senator is calculated in the first instance as the date on which the Oath in Rule II is taken by the Senator that began their current, continuous service in the Senate. Those Senators taking the Oath earlier are more senior than Senators taking the Oath later. For the purposes of this rule, only the calendar day and year are considered and not hours, minutes, seconds, or any smaller denomination of time.
  2. In the event that two or more Senators took the Oath in Rule II on the same date the more senior is the Senator whose state they represent entered the Union earlier.
  3. In the event that two or more Senators took the Oath in Rule II on the same date and the state they represent entered the Union on the same date the more senior is the Senator who has a longer length of service in the positions described in Appendix B based on hierarchy. Any amount of service in a higher office will make that Senator more senior than a longer length of service in a lower office.
Appendix A
Standing Committee on Commerce, Finance, and Labor 1. Secretary of the Treasury
Standing Committee on Health, Science, and the Environment 1. Secretary of Health and Human Services 2. Secretary of the Interior
Standing Committee on Judiciary, Local Government, and Oversight 1. Attorney General 2. Supreme Court Justices
Standing Committee on Veteran Affairs, Foreign Relations, and Armed Services 1. Secretary of State 2. Secretary of Defense
Appendix B
  1. Former senator
  2. Former vice president
  3. Former House member
  4. Former Cabinet secretary
  5. Former state governor
  6. Population of state based on the most recent census when the senator took office
submitted by GuiltyAir to ModelUSGov [link] [comments]

S. J. 28: 121st Senate Rules Floor Vote

121st Senate Rules

Resolved by the United States Senate,
Rule I: President Pro Tempore
1. The President Pro Tempore shall serve at the pleasure of the Senate.
2. Upon the start of a new Congressional term, the Senate shall elect the President Pro Tempore by a vote of all Senators where a majority of all votes determines the winner.
3. Upon a vacancy of the office of President Pro Tempore, there shall be a prompt election to elect the President Pro Tempore conducted in the same manner as Senate Rule I, 2.
4. The President Pro Tempore may resign this position without resigning their Senate seat.
Rule II: Oaths
1. The Oaths and Affirmations prescribed by the constitution and US law shall be taken by each Senator before entering upon their duties.
2. Rule II, 1. of the Senate rules applies to all Senators, regardless of if they are entering for the first time, an incumbent returning, or appointed.
3. The following Oaths have been prescribed by the Constitution and US Law
a. "I, A__ B__, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God." (5 U.S.C. 3331.)
Rule III: Amendment of Rules
1. No motion to suspend, modify, or amend any Senate rule, or any part thereof, shall be in order, except on two days’ notice specifying precisely the rule or part proposed to be suspended, modified, or amended, and the purpose thereof. Any rule may be suspended without notice by the unanimous consent of the Senate, except as otherwise provided in these rules.
2. The rules of the Senate shall continue from one Congress to the next Congress unless they are changed as provided in these rules.
Rule IV: Quorum
1. A quorum shall consist of a majority of the Senators duly chosen and sworn.
Rule V: Voting Procedure
1. All voting periods (including amendment proposals) have a minimum length of 48 hours from their time of posting by the Senate Clerk.
2. No voting period (including amendment proposals) shall exceed one week in length from their time of posting by the Senate Clerk.
3. The Senate Majority Leader may lengthen any voting period (including amendment proposals) prior to the voting period beginning or during the voting period by informing the Senate Clerk.
4. The Chairman of a Committee may lengthen any voting period (including amendment proposals) within their committee prior to the voting period beginning or during the voting period by informing the Senate Clerk.
5. During a voting period, a Senator must vote either in the affirmative by commenting ‘yea’, in the unaffirmative by commenting ‘nay’, or may declare themselves present but not voting in either the affirmative or unaffirmative, by commenting ‘present’ or ‘abstain’.
a. Amendments to bills in either committee or floor votes shall be considered passed with a simple majority.
6. No Senator shall delete or remove their vote, but a Senator may change their vote in a manner prescribed by the Senate Clerk
Rule VI: Docket
1. No one shall submit legislation to the Senate who is not currently serving as a United States Senator. A Senator may sponsor legislation authored by a non-Senator which will allow it to be submitted to the Senate.
2. Any Senator may submit a piece of legislation to the Senate in the manner prescribed by the Senate Clerk.
3. Legislation shall be added to the Senate docket in the order in which it was submitted.
4. The Senate Majority Leader may table any legislation (including treaties and nominations) by informing the Senate Clerk. The Senate Majority Leader may rush any legislation (including treaties) to an amendment proposal or Senate floor vote by informing the Senate Clerk. The Senate Majority Leader may rush a nomination to a Senate floor vote by informing the Senate Clerk. The Senate Majority Leader may alter the order of legislation (including treaties) on the docket by informing the Senate Clerk.
a. A discharge petition, once ordered to the Senate Clerk, can be issued by a simple majority vote of Senators to immediately put legislation before a committee up to an amendment proposal or floor vote on the Senate floor.
b. Legislation (including treaties and nominees) that has come up for an amendment proposal, amendment vote, or Senate floor vote may no longer be tabled.
5. Legislation originating from the House of Representatives shall be treated the same as Senate legislation and all rules applying to Senate legislation shall apply to it as well.
Rule VII: Amendments
1. No Senator shall propose an amendment in a committee (other than a technical, clerical, or conforming amendment) which contains any significant matter not within the jurisdiction of the committee where the amendment is being proposed.
Rule VIII: Reference to Committees
1. In any case in which a controversy arises pursuant to a Chairman or Ranking Member exercising their authority under Senate Rule XI, 5 as to the jurisdiction of any committee with respect to any proposed legislation, the question of jurisdiction shall be decided by the President Pro Tempore, without debate, in favor of the committee which has jurisdiction over the subject matter which predominates in such proposed legislation; but such decision shall be subject to an appeal. XI 5
Rule IX: Committee Establishment
1. There is established a Standing Committee on Veteran Affairs, Foreign Relations, and Armed Services, which shall have jurisdiction over measures relating to the following: the armed forces, foreign relations and treaties, homeland security and governmental affairs, issues of defense and war, and veteran affairs. This committee may be referred to as the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Armed Services.
2. There is established a Standing Committee on Commerce, Finance, Labor, and Pensions, which shall have jurisdiction over measures relating to the following: appropriations and budgeting, revenue and government finance, banking, the currency, labor, interstate commerce, trade, pensions and Social Security, social welfare, small businesses, and education. This committee may be referred to as the Senate Committee on Finance.
3. There is established a Standing Committee on Health, Science, and the Environment, which shall have jurisdiction over measures relating to the following: agriculture, nutrition, forestry, civil space matters, science, transportation, energy, natural resources, the environment and conservation, public works, public health, and healthcare. This committee may be referred to as the Senate Committee on The Environment and Healthcare.
4. There is established a Standing Committee on Judiciary, Local Government, and Oversight, which shall have jurisdiction over measures relating to the following: local government, the Federal District, the judiciary, constitutional amendments, the impeachment of officials, government ethics, government oversight and accountability, and Senate rules and administration, and federal intelligence operations, and its oversight. This committee may be referred to as the Senate Committee on the Judiciary.
5. If ⅓ of senators consent, a special committee may be created to address a particular concern.
Rule X: Selection of Committees
1. Each standing committee shall be composed of five senators, with each senator serving on two different committees.
2. Each Senator must caucus with either the Senate Majority Leader or the Senate Minority Leader for the purposes of committee selection.
3. The Senate Majority Leader must assign three places on each committee.
4. The Senate Minority Leader must assign two places on each committee
5. The Senate Majority Leader will decide committee placements for individual Senators of their caucus.
6. The Senate Minority Leader will decide committee placements for individual Senators of their caucus.
7. Where, due to the size of a caucus, it is required that the opposing caucus leader must select committees for a member of their opposing caucus they must respect the choices of the opposing caucus leader except where it conflicts with their own committee selections.
8. The Majority Leader shall select the Chairman of each committee.
9. The Minority Leader shall select the Ranking Member of each committee.
10. Upon the vacancy of a committee Chairmanship, the Majority Leader shall select one member of that committee to become Chairman.
11. Upon the vacancy of a committee Ranking Membership, the Minority Leader shall select one member of that committee to become Ranking Member.
12. Committees shall be completely re-established in accordance with Senate Rule X upon any successful recaucusing of the Senate Majority Leader.
13. The Senate may create and abolish committees, reform their jurisdictions, or change the leadership and membership on any or all committees by a Senate Resolution passed by a majority of the Senate.
14. Senators which replace other Senators shall take that Senator’s committee assignments, but not their positions of either Chairman or Ranking Member.
Rule XI: Committee Proceedings
1. A majority of the members of a committee shall constitute a quorum of that committee.
2. Committees shall have the power to amend legislation within their committee, to deem a measure fit for consideration on the Senate floor, to deem a measure unfit for consideration on the Senate floor, to report measures to the Senate floor, and to subpoena individuals for questioning on various measures and events before the committee in accordance with Senate Rule XII.
3. Committees shall wield these powers by a simple majority of a quorum except with regards to hearings as the committee will establish their own rules in accordance with Senate Rule XII.
4. While legislation (including treaties) is on the docket, the Senate Majority Leader may contact the Senate Clerk to inform them as to which committee, if any, the legislation should be assigned to. Otherwise, the Senate Clerk shall send legislation to an appropriate committee.
5. Where the Chairman or Ranking Member of another committee objects to the Senate Clerk’s determination of an appropriate committee to send legislation, the dispute shall be resolved with reference to Senate Rule VIII.
6. Legislation may proceed to the Senate floor without first being referred to a committee by the Senate Majority Leader informing the Senate Clerk or consent of ⅔ of the Senate.
7. Each Senate confirmation shall be sent to the appropriate committee, as determined by Appendix A, for a committee vote before being reported to the Senate floor, unless otherwise prescribed by the Senate Majority Leader or a petition of ⅔ majority of the Senate.
8. There shall be a binding vote on that nominee where a majority of the committee in favor shall approve the nominee for a report to the Senate floor. Should a majority of the committee not be in favor the committee shall not approve the nominee for a report to the Senate floor.
9. There shall be a binding vote on that nominee where a majority of the committee in favor shall approve the nominee for a report to the Senate floor. Should a majority of the committee not be in favor the committee shall not approve the nominee for a report to the Senate floor.
10. The Chairman of each committee may send legislation not currently in amendment proposal or amendment votes in their committees straight to a committee vote by informing the Senate Clerk.
Rule XII: Hearing Authorization; Committee Rules
1. Each standing committee is authorized to hold such hearings, to require by subpoena or otherwise the attendance of such witnesses and the production of such correspondence, books, papers, and documents, to take such testimony. Each such committee may make investigations into any matter within its jurisdiction, may report such hearings as may be had by it.
2. Each committee shall adopt rules by majority vote (not inconsistent with the Rules of the Senate) governing the procedure of such committee with regards to hearings and the issuance of subpoenas.
Rule XIII: Election of Majority and Minority Leaders
1. Upon the start of a new Congressional term, the Senate shall hold an election for the office of Senate Majority Leader by a vote of all Senators where the candidate receiving the most votes is the winner. The runner-up becomes Senate Minority Leader, but if there are multiple runners-up gaining the same number of votes, the Vice President shall decide the Senate Minority Leader, but the Senate Minority Leader must be from a different party as the Senate Majority Leader.
2. If there are two or more candidates, and all receive the same number of votes, the Vice President shall decide who becomes Senate Majority Leader.
3. If there are more than two candidates, and the candidates who have received the most votes have also received the same number of votes, the candidate(s) receiving the lowest number of votes shall be eliminated and another ballot of the remaining candidates shall be held.
4. If there is one candidate, the Senate Majority Leader shall select a senator from another party to be Senate Minority Leader.
5. A re-caucus for the positions of Senate Majority Leader and Senate Minority Leader can be issued by both the Senate Majority Leader and Senate Minority Leader informing the Senate Clerk, or by a majority resolution.
6. Should the office of Senate Majority Leader become vacant the Senate shall hold an election to determine a new Senate Majority Leader in accordance with Senate Rule XIII; this includes a new Senate Minority Leader.
7. Should the office of Senate Minority Leader become vacant the minority caucus shall select a new Senate Minority Leader. If the minority caucus cannot decide on a new Senate Minority Leader, the Senate Majority Leader shall select a member of the minority caucus to be the Senate Minority Leader.
8. The Senate Majority Leader or Senate Minority Leader may resign these positions without resigning their Senate seat.
Rule XIV: Poison Pill Amendments
1. No member shall submit any amendment which strikes all significant portions (where significant portion is taken to mean all sections, excluding any definitions, short title, or other procedural section) of a part of legislation, which strikes the enacting clause or amends the enacting clause to a date further than ten years beyond the implementation date of the legislation, or otherwise significantly delays the enactment of the legislation beyond what is just and reasonable, which significantly negates the purpose of the legislation, which strikes particular tenses, letters, or other grammatical functions to make the legislation incoherent, which adds non-germane and/or absurd sections to the legislation to ensure its failure, or which generally alters the language of the legislation in a manner unduly severe or contrary to the original purpose of the legislation.
2. This rule shall be interpreted and enforced by the Chairman of a Committee within their committee and by the Senate Majority Leader outside of committees, and members in violation may be appropriately sanctioned.
Rule XV: Secret Sessions
1. The Senate, by majority vote, may hold a secret session for no longer than seventy-two hours and may be extended by three days by majority vote. No records shall be kept during this time.
Rule XVI: Senate Chamber
1. The Senate Chamber shall not be granted for any other purpose than for the use of the Senate; no smoking shall be permitted at any time on the floor of the Senate, or lighted cigars, cigarettes, e-cigarettes or pipes be brought into the Chamber. It shall be the duty of the Committee on Judiciary, Local Government, and Oversight to make all rules and regulations respecting such parts of the Capitol, its passages and galleries, including the restaurant and the Senate Office Buildings, as are or may be set apart for the use of the Senate and its officers, to be enforced under the direction of the Presiding Officer. The Committee shall make such regulations respecting the reporters' galleries of the Senate, together with the adjoining rooms and facilities, as will confine their occupancy and use to bona fide reporters of newspapers and periodicals, and of news or press associations for daily news dissemination through radio, television, wires, and cables, and similar media of transmission. These regulations shall so provide for the use of such space and facilities as fairly to distribute their use to all such media of news dissemination.
2. The Senate Majority Leader may open a weekly speech thread within the Senate where Senators may comment on any matter they choose while still respecting the rules and decorum of the Senate.
Rule XVII: Usage of Senate Rules
1. Any power a Senator, Chairman, Senate Majority Leader, Senate Minority Leader, President Pro-Tempore, or the President of the Senate is granted within these rules, that is not pertinent to normal Senate business, must be made as a comment on the appropriate thread while pinging the Senate Clerk.
2. In the event of an ambiguity or contradiction within the Senate Rules, the President Pro Tempore may issue an interpretation of the Senate Rules that solves the problem. The President Pro Tempore has final jurisdiction over interpretation of the Senate Rules.
Rule XVIII: Senate Filibusters
1. A filibuster is the process whereby a Senator holds the Senate floor in an attempt to prevent a piece of legislation (including treaties and nominations) from progressing.
2. Any Senator may begin a filibuster by commenting in the appropriate thread designated by the Senate Clerk with the phrase “I am starting a filibuster on [Legislation Title]” and pinging the Senate Clerk.
3. Legislation Title shall refer to the type and number of a bill or be clear beyond a reasonable doubt when opening a filibuster on a treaty or nomination.
4. A filibuster on legislation may only be started during amendment proposals or amendment votes. A filibuster on treaties and nominations may be started during amendment proposals or amendment votes, if applicable, and during Senate floor votes, respectively.
5. No filibuster may be started within 3 hours of the designated time in which the amendment proposal, amendment vote, or Senate floor vote ends.
6. Once a filibuster has been started, the Senator must comment on the amendment proposal, amendment vote, or Senate floor vote thread indicating beyond a reasonable doubt that they are filibustering.
7. Once a Senator has commented in accordance with Senate Rule XVIII, 6. the Senator that is filibustering must reply to their comment every three hours. After every reply in this manner, the time is reset to the original duration of three hours. If the Senator fails to respond within three hours, they will lose the Senate floor; however, another Senator may continue the filibuster by taking the Senate floor within an hour after the original Senator failed to respond. If the other Senator continues the filibuster it is treated as theirs and they must follow these same rules or risk losing the Senate floor.
8. No Senator may continue a filibuster started by another Senator by commenting before the other Senator has lost the floor. A filibuster can only be continued once the filibustering Senator has lost the floor.
9. A Senator who has lost the Senate floor regains it once another Senator continues their filibuster. As such, they may continue the original filibuster if the Senate floor is lost by the filibustering Senator and are treated like any other Senator for the purposes of Senate Rule XVIII.
10. If any Senator discovers that a filibuster has ended due to a violation of Senate Rule XVIII, they may ping the Senate Clerk announcing their discovery. Upon verifying the Senator is correct the Senate Clerk must end the filibuster. The Senate Clerk may also discover a rule violation on their own and use that to end the filibuster. Any filibuster ended in this manner must have an explanation posted in the appropriate thread designated by the Senate Clerk.
11. The Senate Majority Leader and Senate Minority Leader, if in agreement, may end a filibuster immediately.
12. Should 2/3rds of the sitting Senators submit a petition to end a filibuster, it shall be ended immediately. The Senate Clerk may choose to verify the signatures however they see fit.
Rule XIX: Upholding the Constitution Amendment
1. All legislation submitted to and originating from the Senate must include a section citing the main constitutional basis, or basises for the provisions of the legislation. Should the President Pro Tempore, the Majority Leader, and the Minority Leader all agree that the legislation involved does not include such a basis, the legislation shall be struck from the docket
Appendix A
Standing Committee on Commerce, Finance, and Labor
1. Secretary of the Treasury
Standing Committee on Health, Science, and the Environment
1. Secretary of Health and Human Services
2. Secretary of the Interior
Standing Committee on Judiciary, Local Government, and Oversight
1. Attorney General
2. Supreme Court Justices
Standing Committee on Veteran Affairs, Foreign Relations, and Armed Services
1. Secretary of State
2. Secretary of Defense
submitted by GuiltyAir to ModelUSSenate [link] [comments]

S. J. 28: 121st Senate Rules

121st Senate Rules

Resolved by the United States Senate,
Rule I: President Pro Tempore
1. The President Pro Tempore shall serve at the pleasure of the Senate.
2. Upon the start of a new Congressional term, the Senate shall elect the President Pro Tempore by a vote of all Senators where a majority of all votes determines the winner.
3. Upon a vacancy of the office of President Pro Tempore, there shall be a prompt election to elect the President Pro Tempore conducted in the same manner as Senate Rule I, 2.
4. The President Pro Tempore may resign this position without resigning their Senate seat.
Rule II: Oaths
1. The Oaths and Affirmations prescribed by the constitution and US law shall be taken by each Senator before entering upon their duties.
2. Rule II, 1. of the Senate rules applies to all Senators, regardless of if they are entering for the first time, an incumbent returning, or appointed.
3. The following Oaths have been prescribed by the Constitution and US Law
a. "I, A__ B__, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God." (5 U.S.C. 3331.)
Rule III: Amendment of Rules
1. No motion to suspend, modify, or amend any Senate rule, or any part thereof, shall be in order, except on two days’ notice specifying precisely the rule or part proposed to be suspended, modified, or amended, and the purpose thereof. Any rule may be suspended without notice by the unanimous consent of the Senate, except as otherwise provided in these rules.
2. The rules of the Senate shall continue from one Congress to the next Congress unless they are changed as provided in these rules.
Rule IV: Quorum
1. A quorum shall consist of a majority of the Senators duly chosen and sworn.
Rule V: Voting Procedure
1. All voting periods (including amendment proposals) have a minimum length of 48 hours from their time of posting by the Senate Clerk.
2. No voting period (including amendment proposals) shall exceed one week in length from their time of posting by the Senate Clerk.
3. The Senate Majority Leader may lengthen any voting period (including amendment proposals) prior to the voting period beginning or during the voting period by informing the Senate Clerk.
4. The Chairman of a Committee may lengthen any voting period (including amendment proposals) within their committee prior to the voting period beginning or during the voting period by informing the Senate Clerk.
5. During a voting period, a Senator must vote either in the affirmative by commenting ‘yea’, in the unaffirmative by commenting ‘nay’, or may declare themselves present but not voting in either the affirmative or unaffirmative, by commenting ‘present’ or ‘abstain’.
a. Amendments to bills in either committee or floor votes shall be considered passed with a simple majority.
6. No Senator shall delete or remove their vote, but a Senator may change their vote in a manner prescribed by the Senate Clerk
Rule VI: Docket
1. No one shall submit legislation to the Senate who is not currently serving as a United States Senator. A Senator may sponsor legislation authored by a non-Senator which will allow it to be submitted to the Senate.
2. Any Senator may submit a piece of legislation to the Senate in the manner prescribed by the Senate Clerk.
3. Legislation shall be added to the Senate docket in the order in which it was submitted.
4. The Senate Majority Leader may table any legislation (including treaties and nominations) by informing the Senate Clerk. The Senate Majority Leader may rush any legislation (including treaties) to an amendment proposal or Senate floor vote by informing the Senate Clerk. The Senate Majority Leader may rush a nomination to a Senate floor vote by informing the Senate Clerk. The Senate Majority Leader may alter the order of legislation (including treaties) on the docket by informing the Senate Clerk.
a. A discharge petition, once ordered to the Senate Clerk, can be issued by a simple majority vote of Senators to immediately put legislation before a committee up to an amendment proposal or floor vote on the Senate floor.
b. Legislation (including treaties and nominees) that has come up for an amendment proposal, amendment vote, or Senate floor vote may no longer be tabled.
5. Legislation originating from the House of Representatives shall be treated the same as Senate legislation and all rules applying to Senate legislation shall apply to it as well.
Rule VII: Amendments
1. No Senator shall propose an amendment in a committee (other than a technical, clerical, or conforming amendment) which contains any significant matter not within the jurisdiction of the committee where the amendment is being proposed.
Rule VIII: Reference to Committees
1. In any case in which a controversy arises pursuant to a Chairman or Ranking Member exercising their authority under Senate Rule XI, 5 as to the jurisdiction of any committee with respect to any proposed legislation, the question of jurisdiction shall be decided by the President Pro Tempore, without debate, in favor of the committee which has jurisdiction over the subject matter which predominates in such proposed legislation; but such decision shall be subject to an appeal. XI 5
Rule IX: Committee Establishment
1. There is established a Standing Committee on Veteran Affairs, Foreign Relations, and Armed Services, which shall have jurisdiction over measures relating to the following: the armed forces, foreign relations and treaties, homeland security and governmental affairs, issues of defense and war, and veteran affairs. This committee may be referred to as the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Armed Services.
2. There is established a Standing Committee on Commerce, Finance, Labor, and Pensions, which shall have jurisdiction over measures relating to the following: appropriations and budgeting, revenue and government finance, banking, the currency, labor, interstate commerce, trade, pensions and Social Security, social welfare, small businesses, and education. This committee may be referred to as the Senate Committee on Finance.
3. There is established a Standing Committee on Health, Science, and the Environment, which shall have jurisdiction over measures relating to the following: agriculture, nutrition, forestry, civil space matters, science, transportation, energy, natural resources, the environment and conservation, public works, public health, and healthcare. This committee may be referred to as the Senate Committee on The Environment and Healthcare.
4. There is established a Standing Committee on Judiciary, Local Government, and Oversight, which shall have jurisdiction over measures relating to the following: local government, the Federal District, the judiciary, constitutional amendments, the impeachment of officials, government ethics, government oversight and accountability, and Senate rules and administration, and federal intelligence operations, and its oversight. This committee may be referred to as the Senate Committee on the Judiciary.
5. If ⅓ of senators consent, a special committee may be created to address a particular concern.
Rule X: Selection of Committees
1. Each standing committee shall be composed of five senators, with each senator serving on two different committees.
2. Each Senator must caucus with either the Senate Majority Leader or the Senate Minority Leader for the purposes of committee selection.
3. The Senate Majority Leader must assign three places on each committee.
4. The Senate Minority Leader must assign two places on each committee
5. The Senate Majority Leader will decide committee placements for individual Senators of their caucus.
6. The Senate Minority Leader will decide committee placements for individual Senators of their caucus.
7. Where, due to the size of a caucus, it is required that the opposing caucus leader must select committees for a member of their opposing caucus they must respect the choices of the opposing caucus leader except where it conflicts with their own committee selections.
8. The Majority Leader shall select the Chairman of each committee.
9. The Minority Leader shall select the Ranking Member of each committee.
10. Upon the vacancy of a committee Chairmanship, the Majority Leader shall select one member of that committee to become Chairman.
11. Upon the vacancy of a committee Ranking Membership, the Minority Leader shall select one member of that committee to become Ranking Member.
12. Committees shall be completely re-established in accordance with Senate Rule X upon any successful recaucusing of the Senate Majority Leader.
13. The Senate may create and abolish committees, reform their jurisdictions, or change the leadership and membership on any or all committees by a Senate Resolution passed by a majority of the Senate.
14. Senators which replace other Senators shall take that Senator’s committee assignments, but not their positions of either Chairman or Ranking Member.
Rule XI: Committee Proceedings
1. A majority of the members of a committee shall constitute a quorum of that committee.
2. Committees shall have the power to amend legislation within their committee, to deem a measure fit for consideration on the Senate floor, to deem a measure unfit for consideration on the Senate floor, to report measures to the Senate floor, and to subpoena individuals for questioning on various measures and events before the committee in accordance with Senate Rule XII.
3. Committees shall wield these powers by a simple majority of a quorum except with regards to hearings as the committee will establish their own rules in accordance with Senate Rule XII.
4. While legislation (including treaties) is on the docket, the Senate Majority Leader may contact the Senate Clerk to inform them as to which committee, if any, the legislation should be assigned to. Otherwise, the Senate Clerk shall send legislation to an appropriate committee.
5. Where the Chairman or Ranking Member of another committee objects to the Senate Clerk’s determination of an appropriate committee to send legislation, the dispute shall be resolved with reference to Senate Rule VIII.
6. Legislation may proceed to the Senate floor without first being referred to a committee by the Senate Majority Leader informing the Senate Clerk or consent of ⅔ of the Senate.
7. Each Senate confirmation shall be sent to the appropriate committee, as determined by Appendix A, for a committee vote before being reported to the Senate floor, unless otherwise prescribed by the Senate Majority Leader or a petition of ⅔ majority of the Senate.
8. There shall be a binding vote on that nominee where a majority of the committee in favor shall approve the nominee for a report to the Senate floor. Should a majority of the committee not be in favor the committee shall not approve the nominee for a report to the Senate floor.
9. There shall be a binding vote on that nominee where a majority of the committee in favor shall approve the nominee for a report to the Senate floor. Should a majority of the committee not be in favor the committee shall not approve the nominee for a report to the Senate floor.
10. The Chairman of each committee may send legislation not currently in amendment proposal or amendment votes in their committees straight to a committee vote by informing the Senate Clerk.
Rule XII: Hearing Authorization; Committee Rules
1. Each standing committee is authorized to hold such hearings, to require by subpoena or otherwise the attendance of such witnesses and the production of such correspondence, books, papers, and documents, to take such testimony. Each such committee may make investigations into any matter within its jurisdiction, may report such hearings as may be had by it.
2. Each committee shall adopt rules by majority vote (not inconsistent with the Rules of the Senate) governing the procedure of such committee with regards to hearings and the issuance of subpoenas.
Rule XIII: Election of Majority and Minority Leaders
1. Upon the start of a new Congressional term, the Senate shall hold an election for the office of Senate Majority Leader by a vote of all Senators where the candidate receiving the most votes is the winner. The runner-up becomes Senate Minority Leader, but if there are multiple runners-up gaining the same number of votes, the Vice President shall decide the Senate Minority Leader, but the Senate Minority Leader must be from a different party as the Senate Majority Leader.
2. If there are two or more candidates, and all receive the same number of votes, the Vice President shall decide who becomes Senate Majority Leader.
3. If there are more than two candidates, and the candidates who have received the most votes have also received the same number of votes, the candidate(s) receiving the lowest number of votes shall be eliminated and another ballot of the remaining candidates shall be held.
4. If there is one candidate, the Senate Majority Leader shall select a senator from another party to be Senate Minority Leader.
5. A re-caucus for the positions of Senate Majority Leader and Senate Minority Leader can be issued by both the Senate Majority Leader and Senate Minority Leader informing the Senate Clerk, or by a majority resolution.
6. Should the office of Senate Majority Leader become vacant the Senate shall hold an election to determine a new Senate Majority Leader in accordance with Senate Rule XIII; this includes a new Senate Minority Leader.
7. Should the office of Senate Minority Leader become vacant the minority caucus shall select a new Senate Minority Leader. If the minority caucus cannot decide on a new Senate Minority Leader, the Senate Majority Leader shall select a member of the minority caucus to be the Senate Minority Leader.
8. The Senate Majority Leader or Senate Minority Leader may resign these positions without resigning their Senate seat.
Rule XIV: Poison Pill Amendments
1. No member shall submit any amendment which strikes all significant portions (where significant portion is taken to mean all sections, excluding any definitions, short title, or other procedural section) of a part of legislation, which strikes the enacting clause or amends the enacting clause to a date further than ten years beyond the implementation date of the legislation, or otherwise significantly delays the enactment of the legislation beyond what is just and reasonable, which significantly negates the purpose of the legislation, which strikes particular tenses, letters, or other grammatical functions to make the legislation incoherent, which adds non-germane and/or absurd sections to the legislation to ensure its failure, or which generally alters the language of the legislation in a manner unduly severe or contrary to the original purpose of the legislation.
2. This rule shall be interpreted and enforced by the Chairman of a Committee within their committee and by the Senate Majority Leader outside of committees, and members in violation may be appropriately sanctioned.
Rule XV: Secret Sessions
1. The Senate, by majority vote, may hold a secret session for no longer than seventy-two hours and may be extended by three days by majority vote. No records shall be kept during this time.
Rule XVI: Senate Chamber
1. The Senate Chamber shall not be granted for any other purpose than for the use of the Senate; no smoking shall be permitted at any time on the floor of the Senate, or lighted cigars, cigarettes, e-cigarettes or pipes be brought into the Chamber. It shall be the duty of the Committee on Judiciary, Local Government, and Oversight to make all rules and regulations respecting such parts of the Capitol, its passages and galleries, including the restaurant and the Senate Office Buildings, as are or may be set apart for the use of the Senate and its officers, to be enforced under the direction of the Presiding Officer. The Committee shall make such regulations respecting the reporters' galleries of the Senate, together with the adjoining rooms and facilities, as will confine their occupancy and use to bona fide reporters of newspapers and periodicals, and of news or press associations for daily news dissemination through radio, television, wires, and cables, and similar media of transmission. These regulations shall so provide for the use of such space and facilities as fairly to distribute their use to all such media of news dissemination.
2. The Senate Majority Leader may open a weekly speech thread within the Senate where Senators may comment on any matter they choose while still respecting the rules and decorum of the Senate.
Rule XVII: Usage of Senate Rules
1. Any power a Senator, Chairman, Senate Majority Leader, Senate Minority Leader, President Pro-Tempore, or the President of the Senate is granted within these rules, that is not pertinent to normal Senate business, must be made as a comment on the appropriate thread while pinging the Senate Clerk.
2. In the event of an ambiguity or contradiction within the Senate Rules, the President Pro Tempore may issue an interpretation of the Senate Rules that solves the problem. The President Pro Tempore has final jurisdiction over interpretation of the Senate Rules.
Rule XVIII: Senate Filibusters
1. A filibuster is the process whereby a Senator holds the Senate floor in an attempt to prevent a piece of legislation (including treaties and nominations) from progressing.
2. Any Senator may begin a filibuster by commenting in the appropriate thread designated by the Senate Clerk with the phrase “I am starting a filibuster on [Legislation Title]” and pinging the Senate Clerk.
3. Legislation Title shall refer to the type and number of a bill or be clear beyond a reasonable doubt when opening a filibuster on a treaty or nomination.
4. A filibuster on legislation may only be started during amendment proposals or amendment votes. A filibuster on treaties and nominations may be started during amendment proposals or amendment votes, if applicable, and during Senate floor votes, respectively.
5. No filibuster may be started within 3 hours of the designated time in which the amendment proposal, amendment vote, or Senate floor vote ends.
6. Once a filibuster has been started, the Senator must comment on the amendment proposal, amendment vote, or Senate floor vote thread indicating beyond a reasonable doubt that they are filibustering.
7. Once a Senator has commented in accordance with Senate Rule XVIII, 6. the Senator that is filibustering must reply to their comment every three hours. After every reply in this manner, the time is reset to the original duration of three hours. If the Senator fails to respond within three hours, they will lose the Senate floor; however, another Senator may continue the filibuster by taking the Senate floor within an hour after the original Senator failed to respond. If the other Senator continues the filibuster it is treated as theirs and they must follow these same rules or risk losing the Senate floor.
8. No Senator may continue a filibuster started by another Senator by commenting before the other Senator has lost the floor. A filibuster can only be continued once the filibustering Senator has lost the floor.
9. A Senator who has lost the Senate floor regains it once another Senator continues their filibuster. As such, they may continue the original filibuster if the Senate floor is lost by the filibustering Senator and are treated like any other Senator for the purposes of Senate Rule XVIII.
10. If any Senator discovers that a filibuster has ended due to a violation of Senate Rule XVIII, they may ping the Senate Clerk announcing their discovery. Upon verifying the Senator is correct the Senate Clerk must end the filibuster. The Senate Clerk may also discover a rule violation on their own and use that to end the filibuster. Any filibuster ended in this manner must have an explanation posted in the appropriate thread designated by the Senate Clerk.
11. The Senate Majority Leader and Senate Minority Leader, if in agreement, may end a filibuster immediately.
12. Should 2/3rds of the sitting Senators submit a petition to end a filibuster, it shall be ended immediately. The Senate Clerk may choose to verify the signatures however they see fit.
Rule XIX: Upholding the Constitution Amendment
1. All legislation submitted to and originating from the Senate must include a section citing the main constitutional basis, or basises for the provisions of the legislation. Should the President Pro Tempore, the Majority Leader, and the Minority Leader all agree that the legislation involved does not include such a basis, the legislation shall be struck from the docket
Appendix A
Standing Committee on Commerce, Finance, and Labor
1. Secretary of the Treasury
Standing Committee on Health, Science, and the Environment
1. Secretary of Health and Human Services
2. Secretary of the Interior
Standing Committee on Judiciary, Local Government, and Oversight
1. Attorney General
2. Supreme Court Justices
Standing Committee on Veteran Affairs, Foreign Relations, and Armed Services
1. Secretary of State
2. Secretary of Defense
submitted by GuiltyAir to ModelUSGov [link] [comments]

S.Res.014: 119th Senate Rules

119th Senate Rules
Resolved by the United States Senate,
Rule I: President Pro Tempore
  1. The President Pro Tempore shall serve at the pleasure of the Senate.
  2. Upon the start of a new Congressional term, the Senate shall elect the President Pro Tempore by a vote of all Senators where a majority of all votes determines the winner.
  3. Upon a vacancy of the office of President Pro Tempore, there shall be a prompt election to elect the President Pro Tempore conducted in the same manner as Senate Rule I, 2.
  4. The President Pro Tempore may resign this position without resigning their Senate seat.
Rule II: Oaths
  1. The Oaths and Affirmations prescribed by the constitution and US law shall be taken by each Senator before entering upon their duties.
  2. Rule II, 1. of the Senate rules applies to all Senators, regardless of if they are entering for the first time, an incumbent returning, or appointed.
  3. The following Oaths have been prescribed by the Constitution and US Law "I, A__ B__, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God." (5 U.S.C. 3331.)
Rule III: Amendment of Rules
  1. No motion to suspend, modify, or amend any Senate rule, or any part thereof, shall be in order, except on two days’ notice specifying precisely the rule or part proposed to be suspended, modified, or amended, and the purpose thereof. Any rule may be suspended without notice by the unanimous consent of the Senate, except as otherwise provided in these rules.
  2. The rules of the Senate shall continue from one Congress to the next Congress unless they are changed as provided in these rules.
Rule IV: Quorum
  1. A quorum shall consist of a majority of the Senators duly chosen and sworn.
Rule V: Voting Procedure
  1. All voting periods (including amendment proposals) have a minimum length of 48 hours from their time of posting by the Senate Clerk.
  2. No voting period (including amendment proposals) shall exceed one week in length from their time of posting by the Senate Clerk.
  3. The Senate Majority Leader may lengthen any voting period (including amendment proposals) prior to the voting period beginning or during the voting period by informing the Senate Clerk.
  4. The Chairman of a Committee may lengthen any voting period (including amendment proposals) within their committee prior to the voting period beginning or during the voting period by informing the Senate Clerk.
  5. During a voting period, a Senator must vote either in the affirmative by commenting ‘yea’, in the unaffirmative by commenting ‘nay’, or may declare themselves present but not voting in either the affirmative or unaffirmative, by commenting ‘present’ or ‘abstain’.
         a. Amendments to bills in either committee or floor votes shall be considered passed with a simple majority.
  6. No Senator shall delete or remove their vote, but a Senator may change their vote in a manner prescribed by the Senate Clerk
Rule VI: Docket
  1. No one shall submit legislation to the Senate who is not currently serving as a United States Senator. A Senator may sponsor legislation authored by a non-Senator which will allow it to be submitted to the Senate.
  2. Any Senator may submit a piece of legislation to the Senate by modmailing the Senate subreddit in the manner prescribed by the Senate Clerk.
  3. Legislation shall be added to the Senate docket in the order in which it was submitted.
  4. The Senate Majority Leader may table any legislation (including treaties and nominations) by informing the Senate Clerk. The Senate Majority Leader may rush any legislation (including treaties) to an amendment proposal or Senate floor vote by informing the Senate Clerk. The Senate Majority Leader may rush a nomination to a Senate floor vote by informing the Senate Clerk. The Senate Majority Leader may alter the order of legislation (including treaties) on the docket by informing the Senate Clerk.
         a. A discharge petition, once ordered to the Senate Clerk, can be issued by          a simple majority vote of Senators to immediately put legislation before          a committee up to an amendment proposal or floor vote on the Senate          floor.
         b. Legislation (including treaties and nominees) that has come up for an amendment proposal, amendment vote, or Senate floor vote may no longer be tabled.
  5. Legislation originating from the House of Representatives shall be treated the same as Senate legislation and all rules applying to Senate legislation shall apply to it as well.
Rule VII: Amendments
  1. No Senator shall propose an amendment in a committee (other than a technical, clerical, or conforming amendment) which contains any significant matter not within the jurisdiction of the committee where the amendment is being proposed.
Rule VIII: Reference to Committees
  1. In any case in which a controversy arises as to the jurisdiction of any committee with respect to any proposed legislation, the question of jurisdiction shall be decided by the President Pro Tempore, without debate, in favor of the committee which has jurisdiction over the subject matter which predominates in such proposed legislation; but such decision shall be subject to an appeal.
Rule IX: Committee Establishment
  1. There is established a Standing Committee on Veteran Affairs, Foreign Relations, and Armed Services, which shall have jurisdiction over measures relating to the following: the armed forces, foreign relations and treaties, homeland security and governmental affairs, issues of defense and war, and veteran affairs. This committee may be referred to as the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Armed Services.
  2. There is established a Standing Committee on Commerce, Finance, Labor, and Pensions, which shall have jurisdiction over measures relating to the following: appropriations and budgeting, revenue and government finance, banking, the currency, labor, interstate commerce, trade, pensions and Social Security, social welfare, small businesses, and education. This committee may be referred to as the Senate Committee on Finance.
  3. There is established a Standing Committee on Health, Science, and the Environment, which shall have jurisdiction over measures relating to the following: agriculture, nutrition, forestry, civil space matters, science, transportation, energy, natural resources, the environment and conservation, public works, public health, and healthcare. This committee may be referred to as the Senate Committee on The Environment and Healthcare.
  4. There is established a Standing Committee on Judiciary, Local Government, and Oversight, which shall have jurisdiction over measures relating to the following: local government, the Federal District, the judiciary, constitutional amendments, the impeachment of officials, government ethics, government oversight and accountability, and Senate rules and administration, and federal intelligence operations, and its oversight. This committee may be referred to as the Senate Committee on the Judiciary.
  5. If ⅓ of senators consent, a special committee may be created to address a particular concern.
Rule X: Selection of Committees
  1. Each standing committee shall be composed of five senators, with each senator serving on two different committees.
  2. Each Senator must caucus with either the Senate Majority Leader or the Senate Minority Leader for the purposes of committee selection.
  3. The Senate Majority Leader must assign three places on each committee.
  4. The Senate Minority Leader must assign two places on each committee
  5. The Senate Majority Leader will decide committee placements for individual Senators of their caucus.
  6. The Senate Minority Leader will decide committee placements for individual Senators of their caucus.
  7. Where, due to the size of a caucus, it is required that the opposing caucus leader must select committees for a member of their opposing caucus they must respect the choices of the opposing caucus leader except where it conflicts with their own committee selections.
  8. The Majority Leader shall select the Chairman of each committee.
  9. The Minority Leader shall select the Ranking Member of each committee.
  10. Upon the vacancy of a committee Chairmanship, the Majority Leader shall select one member of that committee to become Chairman.
  11. Upon the vacancy of a committee Ranking Membership, the Minority Leader shall select one member of that committee to become Ranking Member.
  12. Committees shall be completely re-established in accordance with Senate Rule X upon any successful recaucusing of the Senate Majority Leader.
  13. The Senate may create and abolish committees, reform their jurisdictions, or change the leadership and membership on any or all committees by a Senate Resolution passed by a majority of the Senate.
  14. Senators which replace other Senators shall take that Senator’s committee assignments, but not their positions of either Chairman or Ranking Member.
Rule XI: Committee Proceedings
  1. A majority of the members of a committee shall constitute a quorum of that committee.
  2. Committees shall have the power to amend legislation within their committee, to deem a measure fit for consideration on the Senate floor, to deem a measure unfit for consideration on the Senate floor, to report measures to the Senate floor, and to subpoena individuals for questioning on various measures and events before the committee in accordance with Senate Rule XII.
  3. Committees shall wield these powers by a simple majority of a quorum except with regards to hearings as the committee will establish their own rules in accordance with Senate Rule XII.
  4. While legislation (including treaties) is on the docket, the Senate Majority Leader may contact the Senate Clerk to inform them as to which committee, if any, the legislation should be assigned to. Otherwise, the Senate Clerk shall send legislation to an appropriate committee.
  5. Where the Chairman or Ranking Member of another committee objects to the Senate Clerk’s determination of an appropriate committee to send legislation, the dispute shall be resolved with reference to Senate Rule VIII.
  6. Legislation may proceed to the Senate floor without first being referred to a committee by the Senate Majority Leader informing the Senate Clerk or consent of ⅔ of the Senate.
  7. Each Senate confirmation shall be sent to the appropriate committee, as determined by Appendix A, for a committee vote before being reported to the Senate floor, unless otherwise prescribed by the Senate Majority Leader or a petition of ⅔ majority of the Senate.
  8. There shall be a binding vote on that nominee where a majority of the committee in favor shall approve the nominee for a report to the Senate floor. Should a majority of the committee not be in favor the committee shall not approve the nominee for a report to the Senate floor.
  9. The Chairman may prescribe that a private committee hearing with the nominee, not exceeding one week, precede the vote on the nominee.
  10. The Chairman of each committee may send legislation not currently in amendment proposal or amendment votes in their committees straight to a committee vote.
Rule XII: Hearing Authorization; Committee Rules
  1. Each standing committee is authorized to hold such hearings, to require by subpoena or otherwise the attendance of such witnesses and the production of such correspondence, books, papers, and documents, to take such testimony. Each such committee may make investigations into any matter within its jurisdiction, may report such hearings as may be had by it.
  2. Each committee shall adopt rules by majority vote (not inconsistent with the Rules of the Senate) governing the procedure of such committee with regards to hearings and the issuance of subpoenas.
Rule XIII: Election of Majority and Minority Leaders
  1. Upon the start of a new Congressional term, the Senate shall hold an election for the office of Senate Majority Leader by a vote of all Senators where the candidate receiving the most votes is the winner. The runner-up becomes Senate Minority Leader, but if there are multiple runners-up gaining the same number of votes, the Vice President shall decide the Senate Minority Leader, but the Senate Minority Leader must be from a different party as the Senate Majority Leader.
  2. If there are two or more candidates, and all receive the same number of votes, the Vice President shall decide who becomes Senate Majority Leader.
  3. If there are more than two candidates, and the candidates who have received the most votes have also received the same number of votes, the candidate(s) receiving the lowest number of votes shall be eliminated and another ballot of the remaining candidates shall be held.
  4. If there is one candidate, the Senate Majority Leader shall select a senator from another party to be Senate Minority Leader.
  5. A re-caucus for the positions of Senate Majority Leader and Senate Minority Leader can be issued by both the Senate Majority Leader and Senate Minority Leader informing the Senate Clerk, or by a majority resolution.
  6. Should the office of Senate Majority Leader become vacant the Senate shall hold an election to determine a new Senate Majority Leader in accordance with Senate Rule XIII; this includes a new Senate Minority Leader.
  7. Should the office of Senate Minority Leader become vacant the minority caucus shall select a new Senate Minority Leader. If the minority caucus cannot decide on a new Senate Minority Leader, the Senate Majority Leader shall select a member of the minority caucus to be the Senate Minority Leader.
  8. The Senate Majority Leader or Senate Minority Leader may resign these positions without resigning their Senate seat.
Rule XIV: Poison Pill Amendments
  1. No member shall submit any amendment which strikes all significant portions (where significant portion is taken to mean all sections, excluding any definitions, short title, or other procedural section) of a part of legislation, which strikes the enacting clause or amends the enacting clause to a date further than ten years beyond the implementation date of the legislation, or otherwise significantly delays the enactment of the legislation beyond what is just and reasonable, which significantly negates the purpose of the legislation, which strikes particular tenses, letters, or other grammatical functions to make the legislation incoherent, which adds non-germane and/or absurd sections to the legislation to ensure its failure, or which generally alters the language of the legislation in a manner unduly severe or contrary to the original purpose of the legislation.
  2. This rule shall be interpreted and enforced by the Chairman of a Committee within their committee and by the Senate Majority Leader outside of committees, and members in violation may be appropriately sanctioned.
Rule XV: Secret Sessions
  1. The Senate, by majority vote, may hold a secret session for no longer than seventy-two hours and may be extended by three days by majority vote. No records shall be kept during this time.
Rule XVI: Senate Chamber
  1. The Senate Chamber shall not be granted for any other purpose than for the use of the Senate; no smoking shall be permitted at any time on the floor of the Senate, or lighted cigars, cigarettes, e-cigarettes or pipes be brought into the Chamber. It shall be the duty of the Committee on Judiciary, Local Government, and Oversight to make all rules and regulations respecting such parts of the Capitol, its passages and galleries, including the restaurant and the Senate Office Buildings, as are or may be set apart for the use of the Senate and its officers, to be enforced under the direction of the Presiding Officer. The Committee shall make such regulations respecting the reporters' galleries of the Senate, together with the adjoining rooms and facilities, as will confine their occupancy and use to bona fide reporters of newspapers and periodicals, and of news or press associations for daily news dissemination through radio, television, wires, and cables, and similar media of transmission. These regulations shall so provide for the use of such space and facilities as fairly to distribute their use to all such media of news dissemination.
  2. The Senate Majority Leader may open a weekly speech thread within the Senate where Senators may comment on any matter they choose while still respecting the rules and decorum of the Senate.
Rule XVII: Usage of Senate Rules
  1. Any power a Senator, Chairman, Senate Majority Leader, Senate Minority Leader, President Pro-Tempore, or the President of the Senate is granted within these rules, that is not pertinent to normal Senate business, must be made as a comment on the appropriate thread while pinging the Senate Clerk.
  2. In the event of an ambiguity or contradiction within the Senate Rules, the President Pro Tempore may issue an interpretation of the Senate Rules that solves the problem. The President Pro Tempore has final jurisdiction over interpretation of the Senate Rules.
Rule XVIII: Senate Filibusters
  1. A filibuster is the process whereby a Senator holds the Senate floor in an attempt to prevent a piece of legislation (including treaties and nominations) from progressing.
  2. Any Senator may begin a filibuster by commenting in the appropriate thread designated by the Senate Clerk with the phrase “I am starting a filibuster on [Legislation Title]” and pinging the Senate Clerk.
  3. Legislation Title shall refer to the type and number of a bill or be clear beyond a reasonable doubt when opening a filibuster on a treaty or nomination.
  4. A filibuster on legislation may only be started during amendment proposals or amendment votes. A filibuster on treaties and nominations may be started during amendment proposals or amendment votes, if applicable, and during Senate floor votes, respectively.
  5. No filibuster may be started within 3 hours of the designated time in which the amendment proposal, amendment vote, or Senate floor vote ends.
  6. Once a filibuster has been started, the Senator must comment on the amendment proposal, amendment vote, or Senate floor vote thread indicating beyond a reasonable doubt that they are filibustering.
  7. Once a Senator has commented in accordance with Senate Rule XVIII, 6. the Senator that is filibustering must reply to their comment every three hours. After every reply in this manner, the time is reset to the original duration of three hours. If the Senator fails to respond within three hours, they will lose the Senate floor; however, another Senator may continue the filibuster by taking the Senate floor within an hour after the original Senator failed to respond. If the other Senator continues the filibuster it is treated as theirs and they must follow these same rules or risk losing the Senate floor.
  8. No Senator may continue a filibuster started by another Senator by commenting before the other Senator has lost the floor. A filibuster can only be continued once the filibustering Senator has lost the floor.
  9. A Senator who has lost the Senate floor regains it once another Senator continues their filibuster. As such, they may continue the original filibuster if the Senate floor is lost by the filibustering Senator and are treated like any other Senator for the purposes of Senate Rule XVIII.
  10. If any Senator discovers that a filibuster has ended due to a violation of Senate Rule XVIII, they may ping the Senate Clerk announcing their discovery. Upon verifying the Senator is correct the Senate Clerk must end the filibuster. The Senate Clerk may also discover a rule violation on their own and use that to end the filibuster. Any filibuster ended in this manner must have an explanation posted in the appropriate thread designated by the Senate Clerk.
  11. The Senate Majority Leader and Senate Minority Leader, if in agreement, may end a filibuster immediately.
  12. Should 2/3rds of the sitting Senators submit a petition to end a filibuster, it shall be ended immediately. The Senate Clerk may choose to verify the signatures however they see fit.
Appendix A
Standing Committee on Commerce, Finance, and Labor
  1. Secretary of the Treasury
Standing Committee on Health, Science, and the Environment
  1. Secretary of Health and Human Services
  2. Secretary of the Interior
Standing Committee on Judiciary, Local Government, and Oversight
  1. Attorney General
  2. Supreme Court Justices
Standing Committee on Veteran Affairs, Foreign Relations, and Armed Services
  1. Secretary of State
  2. Secretary of Defense
These rules were drafted by Senate Majority Leader PrelateZeratul (R-DX1)
submitted by WendellGoldwater to ModelUSGov [link] [comments]

what is the meaning of quorum in commerce video

Section 174 of Companies Act, 2013 Quorum for Board ... What is company meeting? Types of company meeting 2020 ... The brilliance of bioluminescence - Leslie Kenna - YouTube BIOFILM FORMATION - YouTube Trade Quorum: Digital Global Trade Finance Platform and Marketplace 101 SECTION 105, Meeting of Board And Its Power Section 177 Vigil Mechanism Class 8 introduction of company law lecture 5 in hindi b.com and mba student VIVO Pro Kabaddi: Asli toughness ke liye taiyyar? - YouTube QUORUM FOR MEETING

Quorum. A quorum is the minimum number of people required for the meeting to be valid. The Act requires that a quorum be stated in the rules of the association for both general meetings and committee meetings. The quorum may be set as a percentage of the membership rather than a fixed number, to allow for changing membership numbers. Google's free service instantly translates words, phrases, and web pages between English and over 100 other languages. Meaning of Quorum. There are various legal requirements regarding the conduct of a meeting and quorum is one of them. Quorum is the number (such as a majority) of officers or members of a body that when duly assembled is legally competent to transact business. A quorum is the minimum number of people who must be present to pass a law, make a Meaning / Definition of Quorum. Categories: Business and Management, Estate Planning, Compliance and Governance, Legal, , The minimum number of people who must attend a meeting in order for valid business to be conducted. The term is from the 15th/16th century and the earliest use of English, specifically from the Latin phrase used at the start of commissions for committee members, "quorum vos The quorum for a shareholders’ meeting is the number of shareholders able to exercise a majority of votes (in person, postal or by proxy) on the business to be dealt with, unless the company’s constitution specifies otherwise. Board meetings. A quorum consists of the majority of directors, unless the company’s constitution provides otherwise. Quorum meaning in hindi ह न द म म न ग is गणप र त english. Quorum definition in hindi.The minimal number of officers and members of a committee or organization usually a majority who must be present for valid transaction of business. quorum. [ ( kwawr-uhm) ] The minimum number of members of a committee or legislative body who must be present before business can officially or legally be conducted. In the United States Congress, for example, either house must have a majority (218 in the House of Representatives, 51 in the Senate) to have a quorum. a court or tribunal: the forum of public opinion. an assembly, meeting place, television program, etc., for the discussion of questions of public interest. Also called online forum, internet forum, web forum . message board. the Forum, the forum in the ancient city of Rome. Quorum. A quorum is the minimum number of people required for the meeting to be valid. The Act requires that a quorum be stated in the rules of the association for both general meetings and committee meetings. The quorum may be set as a percentage of the membership rather than a fixed number, to allow for changing membership numbers. Definition. A quorum is the minimum number of members of a group or committee required to be in attendance in order for that group to be able to take official action. Groups that often have quorum requirements include legislative bodies, corporate boards of directors, and corporate shareholder meetings.

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Section 174 of Companies Act, 2013 Quorum for Board ...

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what is the meaning of quorum in commerce

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