Definition
Sessional orders are resolutions agreed to by both houses of a legislative body — historically the Parliament of England — at or near the commencement of each parliamentary session. They govern the internal business, procedures, and convenience of the legislature for the duration of that session only. Upon the close of the session, sessional orders expire automatically; they carry no continuing force into subsequent sessions. Their primary function is procedural: regulating the order of business, establishing working rules, and managing the practical conduct of legislative affairs.
Common Confusion
Sessional orders are easily confused with standing orders, which are the permanent or continuing procedural rules of a legislative body that survive from session to session unless formally amended or repealed. The distinction is precise: a sessional order dies at the end of the session that adopted it; a standing order does not. Historical sources do not always maintain this distinction cleanly, and researchers should not assume that a reference to legislative "orders" in older parliamentary materials necessarily means either type to the exclusion of the other without confirming context.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in sources treating English parliamentary law and constitutional history. Researchers working with materials on Parliament, colonial legislatures, or early American legislative assemblies may encounter the term in treatises, procedural manuals, and historical commentaries. Several points are worth tracking:
Session-bound expiration is the defining characteristic. A sessional order is not a standing rule, a statute, or a permanent order of the house. Any research question turning on whether a procedural rule carried over between sessions requires careful attention to whether the authority cited was a sessional order or a standing order — the two are frequently conflated in older secondary sources.
The term is largely absent from American legal materials. American legislative procedure adopted standing rules and rules of procedure that persist across sessions rather than relying on session-specific resolutions as a primary mechanism. Researchers searching American legislative history for "sessional orders" are unlikely to find meaningful usage; the functional equivalent in U.S. legislatures is closer to "rules of the session" or temporary rules adopted at the opening of a new Congress or state legislature.
Corpus placement matters. In Law Mind materials, this term surfaces in parliamentary law, constitutional history, and legislative procedure contexts. It is not a term of art in contracts, civil procedure, or criminal law.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries are in close agreement. Black's, Rapalje & Lawrence, and Bouvier's all describe sessional orders as resolutions of both houses of Parliament, adopted at the commencement of each session, and operative only for that session. The consensus definition is stable across all three sources, with no meaningful divergence.
Black's adds the useful functional note — drawn from Brown — that sessional orders "are principally of use as directing the order of business," which clarifies their procedural rather than substantive character. Bouvier's cites May's Parliamentary Law (Erskine May's treatise on the law, privileges, proceedings, and usage of Parliament), which is the authoritative primary reference for this area and a natural next stop for any researcher needing depth on the subject.
Note that the Rapalje & Lawrence entry as reproduced in source materials appears to contain a textual corruption, running the sessional orders definition into text from an unrelated entry on set-off. Researchers using that dictionary directly should be aware the passage is garbled and should cross-check against Black's and Bouvier's.
None of the three dictionaries address American legislative analogues or note the term's near-absence from U.S. practice — a gap researchers should keep in mind.
Jurisdictional Note
Sessional orders as a formal category belong to English parliamentary procedure and the Westminster tradition. Legislatures in Commonwealth jurisdictions that follow parliamentary procedure (Canada, Australia, New Zealand) will recognize the distinction between sessional orders and standing orders. In the United States, the concept does not map cleanly onto federal or state legislative practice, where procedural rules are typically adopted as standing rules at the opening of a session and may persist or be renewed without the automatic expiration feature that defines sessional orders.