Parliamentary procedure in the context of "Censure"

Ratification is a principal's legal confirmation of an act of its agent. In international law, ratification is the process by which a state declares its consent to be bound to a treaty. In the case of bilateral treaties, ratification is usually accomplished by exchanging the requisite instruments, and in the case of multilateral treaties, the usual procedure is for the depositary to collect the ratifications of all states, keeping all parties informed of the situation.

The institution of ratification grants states the necessary time-frame to seek the required approval for the treaty on the domestic level and to enact the necessary legislation to give domestic effect to that treaty. The term applies to private contract law, international treaties, and constitutions in federal states such as the United States and Canada. The term is also used in parliamentary procedure in deliberative assemblies.

A deliberative assembly is a meeting of members who use parliamentary procedure.

Debate in parliamentary procedure refers to discussion on the merits of a pending question; that is, whether it should or should not be agreed to. It is also commonly referred to as "discussion".

Robert's Rules of Order, often simply referred to as Robert's Rules, is a manual of parliamentary procedure by U.S. Army officer Henry Martyn Robert (1837–1923). "The object of Rules of Order is to assist an assembly to accomplish the work for which it was designed [...] Where there is no law [...] there is the least of real liberty." The term Robert's Rules of Order is also used more generically to refer to any of the more recent editions, by various editors and authors, based on any of Robert's original editions, and the term is used more generically in the United States to refer to parliamentary procedure. It was written primarily to help guide voluntary associations in their operations of governance.

Robert's manual was first published in 1876 as an adaptation of the rules and practice of the United States Congress to suit the needs of non-legislative societies. Robert's Rules is the most widely used manual of parliamentary procedure in the United States. It governs the meetings of a diverse range of organizations—including church groups, county commissions, homeowners' associations, nonprofit associations, professional societies, school boards, trade unions, and college fraternities and sororities—that have adopted it as their parliamentary authority. Robert published four editions of the manual before his death in 1923, the last being the thoroughly revised and expanded Fourth Edition published as Robert's Rules of Order Revised in May 1915.

Social choice theory is a branch of welfare economics that extends the theory of rational choice to collective decision-making. Social choice studies the behavior of different mathematical procedures (social welfare functions) used to combine individual preferences into a coherent whole. It contrasts with political science in that it is a normative field that studies how a society can make good decisions, whereas political science is a descriptive field that observes how societies actually do make decisions. While social choice began as a branch of economics and decision theory, it has since received substantial contributions from mathematics, philosophy, political science, and game theory.

Real-world examples of social choice rules include constitutions and parliamentary procedures for voting on laws, as well as electoral systems; as such, the field is occasionally called voting theory. It is closely related to mechanism design, which uses game theory to model social choice with imperfect information and self-interested citizens.

A preamble (from Latin preambulum 'preliminary, preface') is an introductory and expressionary statement in a document that explains the document's purpose and underlying philosophy. When applied to the opening paragraphs of a statute, it may recite historical facts pertinent to the subject of the statute. It is distinct from the long title or enacting formula of a law.

In the American context of parliamentary procedure, according to Robert's Rules of Order, a preamble consists of "Whereas" clauses that are placed before the resolving clauses in a resolution (formal written motion). However, preambles are not required to be placed in resolutions. According to Robert's Rules of Order, including such background information may not be helpful in passing the resolution.

The Supreme Council of Judicial Ordinances (or the Grand Council of Justice, Turkish: Meclis-i Vâlâ-yı Ahkâm-ı Adliye, also known as Meclis-i Vâlâ) was a legislative and judicial body of the Ottoman Empire during the Tanzimat period, serving as the equivalent of a Court of Cassation, Court of Appeals, and a Council of State. The council was indeed split into these institutions upon its dissolution. Established in the later end of Mahmud II's reign, it was at first mandated to give opinions and recommendations on legislation drawn up from other parts of the government, but was soon given the sole authority to draft its own laws, regulations, and legislation during the Tanzimat era.

The Supreme Council's rules included a parliamentary procedure that gave the right to free speech for all its members in orderly discussion. It was the first institution of the central government to include non-Muslims.