Book Review
A Book Review Donald A Fishman
Jim Slaughter, Notes and Comments on Robert’s Rules, Fifth Edition. Parliamentary Procedure Press, 2022. 240 pp.
This is the fifth edition of a book first published in 1982. The new edition contains all the strengths of the earlier versions, but it also includes a section on electronic and hybrid meetings that is greatly needed by organizations in our pandemic-influenced environment.
The author, Jim Slaughter, is a talented and versatile practitioner who has become one of the country’s most respected parliamentarians. Slaughter, an attorney and awardwinning author, has worked as an in-the trenches parliamentarian for organizations such as the American Federation of Teachers, the AFL-CIO, the National League of Cities, and the Oncology Nursing Society among the over forty-five national and international groups listed on his resume. In addition, Slaughter has served as a parliamentarian for a long list of condominium associations, religious groups, state associations, and corporate clients. Above all, Slaughter has both the academic
and practical credentials to provide a helpful guide to explain the complexities of Robert’s Rules of Order Newly Revised (RONR) 12th ed. This book retains its earlier format, but with updated references to the pages in RONR (12th ed.). The premise of the book is that it seeks a “middle space” between those parliamentary books that oversimplify RONR and leave too much to the discretion of a chair and the intimidating complexities of reading RONR with its thoroughness and the depth of its provisions. The overriding goal of the book remains similar to earlier editions: To increase the number of well-run meetings and help members fulfill their organizational goals with meaningful and knowledgeable participation. The organizational scheme of the book is similar to earlier editions. After a brief discussion of the order of precedence, the author develops a question-and-answer format to handle a wide range of motions, and then he discusses topics such what constitutes www.parliamentarians.org
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