''A Manual of Parliamentary Practice for the Use of the Senate of the United States'', written by

Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson (, 1743July 4, 1826) was an American Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father and the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was the primary author of the United States Declaration of Indepe ...

in 1801, is the first American book on

parliamentary procedure Parliamentary procedures are the accepted Procedural law, rules, ethics, and Norm (sociology), customs governing meetings of an deliberative assembly, assembly or organization. Their object is to allow orderly deliberation upon questions of inte ...

. As

Vice President of the United States The vice president of the United States (VPOTUS) is the second-highest ranking office in the Executive branch of the United States government, executive branch of the U.S. federal government, after the president of the United States, and ranks f ...

, Jefferson served as the Senate's presiding officer from 1797 to 1801. Throughout these four years, Jefferson worked on various texts and, in early 1800, started to assemble them into a single manuscript for the Senate's use. In December 1800 he delivered his manuscript to printer Samuel Harrison Smith, who delivered the final product to Jefferson on February 27, 1801. Later, the

House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entities. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often ...

also adopted the ''Manual'' for use in its chamber. Jefferson's ''Manual'' was based on notes Jefferson took while studying parliamentary procedure at the

College of William and Mary The College of William & Mary (abbreviated as W&M) is a public research university in Williamsburg, Virginia, United States. Founded in 1693 under a royal charter issued by King William III and Queen Mary II, it is the second-oldest instit ...

. A second edition with added material by Jefferson was printed in 1812. The ''Manual'' is arranged in fifty-three categories from (1) The Importance of Adhering to Rules to (53)

Impeachment Impeachment is a process by which a legislative body or other legally constituted tribunal initiates charges against a public official for misconduct. It may be understood as a unique process involving both political and legal elements. In Eur ...

. Each section includes the appropriate rules and practices of the British Parliament along with the applicable texts from the

Constitution of the United States The Constitution of the United States is the Supremacy Clause, supreme law of the United States, United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, on March 4, 1789. Originally includi ...

and the thirty-two Senate rules that existed in 1801.

U.S. Senate

The Senate traditionally has not considered Jefferson's ''Manual of Parliamentary Practice'' to be its direct authority on parliamentary procedure. However, starting in 1828 the Senate began publishing a version of Jefferson's ''Manual'' for its use, removing the Senate Rules from within the text and placing them in a separate section. In 1888, when the Senate initiated publication of the '' Senate Manual'', a copy of the manual was included in each biennial edition. This practice continued until 1977.

U.S. House of Representatives

The House of Representatives formally incorporated Jefferson's ''Manual'' into its rules in 1837, stipulating that the manual "should govern the House in all cases to which they are applicable and in which they are not inconsistent with the standing rules and order of the House and the joint rules of the Senate and the House of Representatives." Since then, the House has regularly printed an abridged version of the ''Manual'' in its publication entitled ''Constitution, Jefferson's Manual, and Rules of the House of Representatives''.

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First edition
published in 1801

{{Authority control 1801 non-fiction books Books by Thomas Jefferson United States House of Representatives Parliamentary authority Books about politics of the United States Books written by presidents of the United States

U.S. Senate

U.S. House of Representatives

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