| Senator Gladden,
Submotions or subsidiary motions are defined in Robert's Rules of Order at:
Robert's Rules
12. Subsidiary Motions are such as are applied to other motions for the purpose of most appropriately disposing of them. By means of them the original motion may be modified, or action postponed, or it may be referred to a committee to investigate and report, etc. They may be applied to any main motion, and when made they supersede the main motion and must be decided before the main motion can be acted upon. None of them, except the motion to amend and those that close or limit or extend the limits of debate, can be applied to a subsidiary, incidental (except an appeal in certain cases), or privileged motion. Subsidiary motions, except to lay on the table, the previous question, and postpone indefinitely, may be amended. The motions affecting the limits of debate may be applied to any debatable question regardless of its privilege, and require a two-thirds vote for their adoption. All those of lower rank than those affecting the limits of debate are debatable, the rest are not. The motion to amend anything that has already been adopted, as by-laws or minutes, is not a subsidiary motion but is a main motion and can be laid on the table or have applied to it any other subsidiary motion without affecting the by-laws or minutes, because the latter are not pending.
In the following list the subsidiary motions are arranged in the order of their precedence, the first one having the highest rank. When one of them is the immediately pending question every motion above it is in order, and every one below it is out of order. They are as follows:
Subsidiary Motions.
Lay on the Table 28
The Previous Question 29
Limit or Extend Limits of Debate 30
Postpone Definitely, or to a Certain Time 31
Commit or Refer, or Recommit 32
Amend 33
Postpone Indefinitely 34
For a full text of Robert's Rules of Order, see:
http://www.robertsrules.org/rror--00.htm
In Maryland, in more recent times, debate on the death penalty certainly became focused when bills were introduced and passed to remove:
1) the mentally retarded from execution, and later
2) minors from the execution.
(Code Criminal Law Article, sec. 2-202 http://michie.lexisnexis.com/maryland/lpext.dll?f=templates&fn=main-h.htm&cp=)
I will e-mail to you the years in which the mentally retarded and minors were removed from the death penalty.
Diane Frese Evartt |
