Robert's Rules Of Order by Henry Robert ~ 158

158

Legal Rights of Assemblies and the Trial of their Members.

The Right of Deliberative Assemblies to Punish their Members. A deliberative assembly has the inherent right to make and enforce its own laws and punish an offender--the extreme penalty, however, being expulsion from its own body. When expelled, if the assembly is a permanent society, it has a right, for its own protection, to give public notice that the person has ceased to be a member of that society.

But it has no right to go beyond what is necessary for self protection and publish the charges against the member. In a case where a member of a society was expelled, and an officer of the society published, by their order, a statement of the grave charges upon which he had been found guilty, the expelled member recovered damages from the officer, in a suit for libel--the court holding that the truth of the charges did not affect the case.

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