Parliament

The English legislature formed when John was forced to sign the Magna Carta.

More generally, a parliament is any national, legislative assembly.

The "Parl-" root means "to speak," as in parley.

Rules of order

Parliaments and other governing bodies have "rules of order" which govern who may speak, and how votes are taken and counted. These can be very complicated.

To see why these rules are needed, consider this possibility. Suppose a vote is taken in the U. S. House of Representatives when only 300 of its 435 members are there. Suppose 200 people vote for the motion and 100 people vote against it. Should the motion pass? A majority of those who were present voted for it, but the 200 people who voted for it are less than half of the entire membership. There's no way to tell how the 135 absent members would have voted; if all of them had voted against the motion, it would have been defeated.

In this case, the rule that applies is called the quorum rule, and it says that as long as there are at least 218 members present, votes can be taken and the majority of those present prevails. So, a clever representative may try to arrange for votes to be taken at a time when he knows that more of his supporters and fewer of his opponents are present.

"Rules of order" are often called parliamentary procedure. Many organizations adopt rules of order which are broadly similar to each other. A popular reference book called "Robert's Rules of Order" gives a detailed outline of parliamentary procedure. In a small organization, like the governing body of a club or a town government, many members may not be completely familiar with all the rules. There may be a member called a "parliamentarian" whose job is to know the rules and act as a sort of referee for enforcing them.