Or the chair may decide the point “not well taken.” In that case, the member who made it may, if he please:
(g) Appeal.—The appeal requires a second, and when made, is sometimes open to debate. The question is put in the form:
“Shall the decision of the chair be sustained?” The ayes, therefore, vote for the chair, and the noes in favor of the appeal. A tie vote sustains the chair.
When an appeal has been sustained, the chair must act in accordance with it, even though he knows he is violating the rules in doing so. He is the servant of the house, and must take his instructions from it.
A member may also object to the language used by another member, and call him to order. A member thus called to order must at once take his seat until the chair has ruled on the point. If the decision is against him, he may resume speaking only after offering an apology, and the assembly may, if it please, deny him the right to speak further.
C. The PRIVILEGED QUESTIONS are few in number, but they displace all the motions already described, and also have certain relative values among themselves.
(a) Orders of the Day.—A society sometimes fixes a certain order of business to be carried out at a particular time at each meeting; this is the general order. When, at a previous meeting, a question has been postponed to a particular hour of a succeeding meeting, that question becomes a special order for that day.
When the proper time arrives, the chair may call the attention of the meeting to the fact, or a member may rise and “call for the order of the day.” Whatever business is pending must at once be suspended. Once before the meeting, the question may be again postponed if the house so votes, in which case the suspended business is resumed. Otherwise the order passes to a decision in the regular way. The order of the day must be called for at the proper time; if forgotten or neglected then, it loses its privilege, and can be taken up only as unfinished business later.
When it is called for, the meeting may vote not to take it up. That means that it prefers to dispose first of the business already before it. But as soon as that is done with, the order of the day must be taken up next.
(b) Questions of Privilege.—These are matters affecting the rights, dignity, or reputation of individual members or of the whole assembly, and any business may be interrupted to state them. A member who feels that his right to debate is infringed by the chair or by other members, who feels that his character is assailed or his views misrepresented, may “rise to a question of privilege.” Also unsatisfactory conditions of light or ventilation, unseemly behavior of members or visitors, charges against the official conduct of officers of the body, and so forth, are suitable matters for questions of privilege. The chair need not entertain the question if he thinks it of insufficient importance, but his decision is subject to appeal. If the question is put as a motion, it is like any motion subject to amendment, commitment, postponement, and so forth. All such questions are debatable.