Session (parliamentary procedure)

According to Robert's Rules of Order, a widely used guide to parliamentary procedure, a meeting is a gathering of a group of people to make decisions. This sense of "meeting" may be different from the general sense in that a meeting in general may not necessarily be conducted for the purpose of making decisions.

Each meeting may be a separate session or part of a group of meetings constituting a session. Meetings vary in their frequency, with certain actions being affected depending on whether the meetings are held more than a quarterly time interval apart. There are different types of meetings, such as a regular meeting, special meeting, or annual meeting. Each meeting may have an agenda, which lists the business that is to come up during the meeting. A record of the meeting is summarized in the minutes.

A session is a meeting or series of connected meetings devoted to a single order of business, program, agenda, or announced purpose. An organization's bylaws may define a specific meaning of the term "session." In most organizations, each session consists of only a single meeting (i.e. "session" and "meeting" are equivalent terms in this case).

The significance of a session is that one session generally cannot make decisions that bind a group at a future session. A session has implications for the renewability of motions. The same or substantially the same question cannot be brought up twice in the same session except by means of the motions that bring a question again before the assembly.

A quarterly time interval represents a time limitation on the taking or postponement of certain actions. No more than a quarterly time interval between two sessions exists when "the second session begins at any time during or before the third calendar month after the calendar month in which the first session ends." For example, if a meeting takes place in January, the other meeting is within a quarterly time interval when the previous meeting is on or after October 1 of the preceding calendar year or when the next meeting occurs on or before April 30 of the current year.

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