Gag rule

A gag rule is a rule that limits or forbids the raising, consideration, or discussion of a particular topic by members of a legislative or decision-making body.

A present-day example can be found in the Dewan Negara (Senate) of Malaysia, which has a standing order prohibiting any member from proposing the repeal of those articles of the Malaysian Constitution that reserve certain privileges for

A gag rule may be formally neutral, that is, forbidding discussions or arguments either for or against a particular policy. For example, William Laud, the Archbishop of Canterbury during the reign of King Charles I of England:

forbade ministers to discuss the sublime mysteries associated with Calvin's doctrine of predestination. They could not preach it, nor could they preach against it. They could not mention it at all... For Laud, what was at stake was not so much the promotion of his own theological opinions as the suppression of the furor theologicus that had caused so much devastation in England and throughout Europe in the aftermath of the Reformation.

However, in practice, the effect (and in most cases, the intent) of even an even-handed ban on advocating or opposing a particular policy will be to entrench the status quo.

ΞΟΉ==United States===

After the beginning of the earnest agitation of the Northern abolitionists against the institution of slavery in 1831, petitions of various kinds poured into the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate praying for the abolition or the restriction of that institution. These were generally presented by John Quincy Adams, who as a member of Congress identified himself particularly with the struggle against any Congressional abridgment of the right of petition. It was Adams who ultimately repealed the rule, by authoring a resolution for repeal, and assembling the coalition necessary to pass it.

The pro-slavery forces responded with a series of gag rules that automatically "tabled" all such petitions, preventing them from being read or discussed. The House passed the Pinckney Resolutions, authored by Henry L. Pinckney of South Carolina, on May 26, 1836, the third of which was known from the beginning as the "gag rule" and passed with a vote of 117 to 68 (The first stated that Congress had no constitutional authority to interfere with slavery in the states and the second that it "ought not" do so in the District of Columbia.)

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