Definition
Managers of a conference are the members formally appointed by each legislative chamber to represent that chamber at a conference between the two houses of a bicameral legislature. When the two houses of a legislature disagree on the form of a bill, they may convene a conference to reconcile differences; the delegates appointed to conduct that meeting on behalf of their respective chamber are the managers.
In the United States Congress, these delegates are more commonly called conferees or conference committee members, but the older parliamentary designation "managers" remains in the formal vocabulary of legislative procedure and appears throughout historical congressional records and parliamentary authority texts.
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Common Confusion
The term "managers" appears in several distinct legislative contexts and is frequently conflated across them. In an impeachment proceeding, "managers" are the members of the House of Representatives appointed to prosecute the case before the Senate — an entirely separate role with no connection to bicameral conference procedure. Researchers encountering "managers" in historical legislative sources must establish context before assuming which function is meant. Additionally, "managers of a conference" should not be confused with the conference committee itself, which is the collective body; managers are the individual members constituting that body.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is primarily a term of art in parliamentary and legislative procedure, and its primary habitat in the Law Mind corpus is historical sources — British parliamentary records, early American congressional practice, and treatises drawing on Erskine May and similar authorities.
Several research traps apply:
British versus American usage: Black's definition is framed around Parliament, where the term originated. In Parliament, an established ratio rule historically applied — the number of Commons managers at a conference was to be double the number of Lords managers. This numerical convention does not transfer to U.S. congressional practice, where conferee appointments are governed by House and Senate rules rather than any fixed ratio.
Terminological drift: American legislative practice largely abandoned "managers of a conference" in favor of "conferees" as the standard working term, though "managers" persisted in formal contexts. Researchers working with early federal legislative records, particularly from the late 18th and 19th centuries, will encounter "managers" used in this sense. Later 20th-century sources predominantly use "conferees."
Impeachment overlap: As noted above, the same period of congressional history uses "managers" for both conference delegates and impeachment prosecutors. The context is usually clear from subject matter, but indexing in historical collections does not always disambiguate.
Corpus connections: Researchers following this term into contemporary procedure will find that the modern counterpart — conference committees and their members — is addressed in civil procedure and legislative practice materials. The mechanics of reconciling disagreements between legislative chambers connect, at a procedural level, to the broader study of how institutions manage dispute resolution through structured negotiation, a thread running from parliamentary conference practice through modern Rule 16 pretrial conference procedure.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary provides the sole historical dictionary entry for this term, and it is brief: managers are members of the houses of parliament appointed to represent each house at an inter-chamber conference. Black's cites Erskine May's Parliamentary Practice for the ancient rule requiring Commons managers to outnumber Lords managers by a two-to-one ratio.
Black's treatment is accurate for parliamentary usage but does not address American legislative adaptation of the concept. The absence of a dedicated entry in American-focused legal dictionaries reflects the terminological shift toward "conferees" in U.S. practice. Researchers relying solely on Black's will have a sound foundation for understanding British parliamentary sources but should supplement with American legislative procedure treatises — such as Deschler's Precedents or the House Manual — when working with federal legislative records.
No significant divergence exists among historical authorities on the core definition; the term is narrow and technical, and its meaning has been stable. The main evolution is one of disuse rather than redefinition.
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Jurisdictional Note
The term in its classical form belongs to British parliamentary practice. In the U.S. Congress, equivalent delegates are typically called conferees, though "managers" appears in older statutes and records. State legislatures vary in their terminology for conference committee delegates; researchers working with state legislative history should check the particular chamber's rules and glossary rather than assuming uniform usage.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
civpro_74: Pretrial Conferences and Scheduling Orders — Rule 16 (The Law Mind Civil Procedure & Evidence Encyclopedia) — for the structural parallel between legislative conference procedure and court-supervised conference mechanisms designed to resolve disagreement between parties.
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